


Just Plane Crazy

by Kotik



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:38:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kotik/pseuds/Kotik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trip is called to build a plane on Vulcan, while Hoshi is expected to translate the Kir'Shara. T'Pol, sent along as the local expert on Vulcan, realizes that she needs to 'explore human sexuality'. What was once a lame excuse becomes a necessity. Hoshi meanwhile rekindles an unexpected hobby and meets a fascinating and mysterious stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. So many Plans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linda of TriS fame](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Linda+of+TriS+fame).



> Quite a while back – actually in 2010 – my incessant blather about aviation on the Triaxian Silk Forum (you can tell I'm an aviation nut, can't you. I was passing my pilot exam at the time.) made Linda (of TriS and HoT fame, Bineshii on ff dot net) challenge me to write a story that involves planes on Vulcan. It has been on my mind for a long, long time and I finally managed to start it. It is a special piece of writing for me, because Linda was my very first beta reader back in 2009. Everyone who has ever beta'ed for a non-native speaker will know what a difficult task that is. Her kind words and helpful tips made me confident enough to try more fanfic writing. Thanks Linda, this one's for you.  
> … fast forward two years...  
> The above text was my introduction many, many moons ago. I posted a first chapter, but I had written myself into such a corner, I never found my way out of it again. I never found the inspiration to continue it and I started to feel bad, as Linda as my first ever beta-reader has a special place in my heart and without her kind encouragement at the time I would probably have given up on fanfiction before really starting it. Now, in 2014, I have found a wonderful beta-reader in Eireann, who is not only refreshingly and brutally honest whenever I come up with a rubbish or too radical idea (although she still apologizes too often for it ;) ), she also admirably puts up with my occasional lapse into rude language or generally just me being a buffoon. Bless you ma'am.  
> Not wanting to shirk the challenge from Linda, I started from scratch and after bumping the chapter back and forth twice with my beta I sat down finding myself quite amazed with what my initial idea had become. What had started as a draft, one that I was quite satisfied with in the first place, blew me away when I read what had become of it after Eireann had fine-tuned it and ironed out all the wrinkles that come with me being a non-native speaker. Eireann, I can't tell you how much that means to me, because I only had that experience once – when I read my very first chapter back in 2009 after Linda had put her hands on my very first attempt. You are both wonderful ladies.  
> As for the story. It starts right after the conclusion of the Vulcan Reformation Arc in season four. Like many other males of the species, I hate the useless and contrived TnT angst of season 4, effectively rendering Trip a pitiful doormat. That's why I take this AU immediately after T'Pol's shambles of a marriage is dissolved. This story involves planes, so you'll find some aviation related technobabble in it.  
> There will be two versions of this story. First there is the 'American TV Edition', where all the bed-sheets are L-shaped, so that his torso is bare in the morning while she's covered up to the ears like a nun. And there is the 'German TV version' where people in the shower are naked and the juicy parts are not faded to black, even if it is shown at 2pm in the afternoon.  
> With my muse on 'roids and the help of a wonderful beta-reader, I will get this done this time.

Coming out of the shower, T'Pol deferred clothing herself in favor of inspecting the healing process of her injured leg. The dark green bruises were almost gone, and according to Phlox continued application of the less-than-agreeable-smelling ointment would render them invisible by the next day. After renewing her nasal numbing agent she started to anoint the affected areas: the leg, the hip, the right arm, the side of her right breast and her temple. Thankfully the captain had granted her request to be left alone in her quarters for at least forty-eight hours – ostensibly to grieve in solitude. 

The true reason for her seclusion was that she did not wish to interact with any of her crew mates while the katra of her mother still resided in her mind. Additionally, her wish not to soil any of her garments with the foul-smelling medicine made it imperative that she spent at least thirty minutes after renewing the coating over her bruises without clothes until the substance had soaked into her skin. She felt grateful that Commander Tucker had evidently spent some of the time after his premature departure from Vulcan after her forced wedding in fulfilling his earlier promise to adjust the temperature controls. Now that she could set the room temperature closer to Vulcan norm, she could spend the waiting time without being cold despite the absence of any attire. 

After lighting the meditation candle she sat down and soon found herself in the white space of her mind, where her mother was already in meditation. This was, obviously, rudely interrupted by her arrival.

“Child!” her mother's image gasped, scandalized by her daughter's nude form. 

Rolling her eyes in exasperation at her own forgetfulness, T'Pol concentrated on modifying her mental image and appropriate attire appeared, covering her body. 

“ I apologize, Mother.”

“ You seem to have grown quite used to this unseemly state of undress.”

“ Mother, you left your body only yesterday. Surely you have not yet forgotten that divesting oneself of one’s clothing is not entirely preventable in life.”

“ You, however, seem to do so purely to amuse yourself,” her mother's katra admonished her. “I am sure Commander Tucker will appreciate this new-found habit of yours.”

At hearing his name T'Pol grew wistful and did not provide a reply to her mother's provocation.

“ I do not understand your hesitation, T'Pol. Considering how long Commander Tucker has endured your indecisiveness and your constant rejections – and still does – I see no reason why he would refuse you, now that you have finally been released from your marriage.”

“ He is not someone who is satisfied being the second choice. I should have contested the marriage instead of breaking his heart.”

“ He did not seem to be in cardiovascular distress after your wedding.”

“ It is a human metaphor, Mother,” she said rolling her eyes again. “I brought pain and despair to his mind when I married another man before his eyes, knowing how strong his affection for me is. His willingness to endure it for my sake only shames me more, as in retrospect he offered a completely useless sacrifice.”

“ Yet you wish nothing more than that he disregards your captain's order and comes to your quarters and sees you in your current state of undress.”

T'Pol gasped. “Mother, I would prefer if you forewent commenting on my most intimate thoughts. It is unnerving enough that I cannot hide them from you.”

“ Do not be frustrated, Daughter. In the morning my katra will be retired to a katric arc. Until then it is just as well that I belatedly do my duty of educating you in intimate matters. I had always shirked this responsibility, hoping that your immense curiosity would lead you to find your own answers.”

“ Mother, you know my memories. You know that I already have practical experience in intimate matters. I doubt I need a theoretical refresher course.”

For the first time in her life T'Pol heard her mother snort sarcastically. It was only her mental image of TLes's katra, but the emotion was real enough. 

“ T'Pol, you barely managed to perform the mechanical basics of the act without injuring yourself or your partner. Your encounter with Commander Tucker was supremely dissatisfying for both of you, since you held on to your emotional control in fear of what would happen if you did not.”

“ And that is wrong?”

“ Let me explain why your father and I had a most satisfying intimate life.”

“Please do not be too detailed, mother,” T'Pol requested hastily, as her mother's katra started her lecture. 

=/\=

“ You wanted to see me Cap'n?”

Trip sat down in the  Captain's Mess where Hoshi was already waiting. He exchanged a look with her, but the ensign's shrug told him that she also had no clue what the captain wanted.

“Both of you will spend the next four weeks on Vulcan,” the captain said. 

Trip flinched at the mention of an extended stay on Vulcan. Its nature as a desert planet was enough of a deterrent to any wish to stay there, even if he had no other. Whenever their mission had brought them to a desert he had returned to the ship half-dead. Last time there had been at least a good reason to risk his life; that was, of course, until that very same reason told him that she was going to marry another guy. Since that day, the only thing he associated with the planet was heartbreak – unspeakably painful heartbreak. Not that he could tell the captain that.

“I wouldn't mind a bit of downtime, Cap'n,” he responded, cautiously blending dutiful obedience with due lack of enthusiasm – Jon would certainly not expect him to be keen on the idea. “But Vulcan isn't exactly my idea of a holiday resort.” 

“ It won't be a holiday, Trip. You'll both be on official business. Minister T'Pau requested Hoshi's help in translating the  _ Kir'Shara _ to Human Standard and offers a visit to the monastery on Mount Seleya. Apparently they have caves and scrolls that are more than three thousand years old.”

Trip grinned in spite of himself when he saw Hoshi's enthusiastic smile. When it came to studying ancient images and texts, wild horses couldn't stop the young linguist. He looked at the captain to learn about his own assignment. 

“ You, Trip, will go on a busman's holiday. The Vulcan science academy has requested your help to build a historic airplane and don't ask me why. They just did.”

The engineer’s grin became a little more genuine. “Well, who cares why? It's important that they do. And since they probably don't have any pilots with that kind of trainin’ and I don't see Travis in here either, I guess I get to fly it as well.” 

“ That's what they were hoping for. I told them you have experience in hand-flying.”

Trip rubbed his hands together in glee. He heard the Captain ask Hoshi to leave, and the young officer left with a spring in her step about the upcoming assignment. 

“She's happy as a clam at high tide,” Trip said with a grin. The captain nodded in amusement. 

“ Trip, I'm also sending down T'Pol with the two of you. She's been away for years except that short visit four months ago and I suppose she'll have some things to get sorted after her mother's death. I'd also be more relaxed knowing that you and Hoshi have someone with you who knows her way around the place.”

The news destroyed Trip’s momentary elation about the airplane project. His vision swam as he was hit by a bout of nausea. He had believed T'Pol when she had told him that she left a contrail right after the ceremony and that this Koss guy didn't even get a wedding night, though he’d tried not to examine too closely his own unworthy joy at the news. But there was no chance in the world she could avoid the guy for four weeks. 

“ I don't think that's a good idea, Cap'n. What if that husband of hers...”

His objection was interrupted by a widely grinning captain. 

“ T'Pol was released from her marriage shortly after she came back to the ship.”

=/\=

Jon wanted to double over in laughter as he saw Trip perform a remarkably lifelike fish impersonation. His mouth moved, but no words came out for quite a while. 

“ That real, Cap'n? She got a divorce?”

“As far as I understood, it was annulled, meaning technically she never was married.” 

“ That's great. She couldn't stand the guy anyway.”

Jon waited until Trip would realize that neither an agreement nor disagreement was forthcoming. He met the questioning glance of his chief engineer. 

“ Trip, there is another reason why I want to send her home for a while. She has no siblings, her mother just died and however involuntary that marriage was, her husband just dumped her. She's completely alone. T'Pol needs to reconnect with her clan, or better yet – reconnect with the one guy she really wanted in the first place.”

“Oh?” 

Jon thought to himself that Trip was completely hopeless at faking surprise. 

“ Trip. Who do you think you’ve been kidding? I saw you come back from Vulcan as sick as a dog. It was me who hauled your carcass to sickbay after you tried to drink yourself into a coma.”

He waved off Trip's muttered apology, and continued. 

“ I don't know if it’ll finally work out between the two of you. But I want you to have a chance to try. And I reckon T'Pol will be less reluctant to let go of her doubts if she’s in an environment that she feels comfortable in.”

“ As much as I would like it if you're right, Jon,” Trip said – and it was good to hear him use his first name again after a long time – “she's got other things on her mind right now. Her mother just died. I’ll be the last person she wants to deal with right now. And don't forget that you just barged into the High Command with an artifact that says everything she's learned all her life has been corrupt.”

Jon smiled. Even if one tried to encourage Trip, T'Pol's well-being was the most important thing on his mind. He doubted his science officer had any idea what sort of catch she was spurning if she didn't fork him to the plate soon.

“ Trip, her mother didn't really die. Yes, her organs have stopped to function and biologically she's dead, but in her dying moments T'Les mind-melded with T'Pol. Her katra is in T'Pol's head now and will be transferred to a katric arc by a priest tomorrow.”

Trip started to piece the bits together. Word was that Jon had had the soul of some sort of old Vulcan ghost in his head. He didn't know it for sure, but he had an impression that this was what this ‘katra’ thing was all about. So basically she had saved her mom's soul. Somehow the thought was comforting, knowing that T'Les was not lost forever. He had not cared much for the confrontational way she had talked to T'Pol, but in the end he had come to respect her a lot. Her dry humor left no doubt where T'Pol had gotten it from. And she had helped him to get off the planet sooner rather than later after the ceremony, being the only one who really knew how much he was suffering at the time. 

“So why did she ask for two days of seclusion?” 

“I can’t be sure, but I think she wants to talk to her mother before her katra is retired to the katric arc. They only reconciled shortly before her death. And I suppose she doesn't want you to see her too often before her bruises have healed. She took a few hits down there.” 

“ Well, I saw. Her face was messed up some when I picked her up at the airlock.”

“ She didn't mind being seen like that by most people. But when I told her that  you'd meet her at the airlock she flinched and tried to talk me into letting her find her way to sickbay on her own.”

“That explains why she almost ran to sickbay and brushed me off at the door. 'Thank you Commander, ‘kay, thanks, ‘bye.'” 

Jon smiled at Trip’s antics and grabbed a bottle of the fine stuff and two tumblers from his cabinet. It was as touching as it was amusing that the chief engineer still had the boyish habit of gesticulating with his arms as if he was hell-bent on emphasizing every action with an appropriate gesture. 

“ I don't want to give you false hopes, Trip. But I think she's ready to make the final step, and considering that there’s never been a Human/Vulcan couple, it’s a helluva big step.”

“Trust me, Jon, I know.” 

Jon handed him a drink. 

=/\= 

Trip was checking the contents of his duffle to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten anything major. He could probably buy anything he would need in the shops of the human compound, but he hated it when stuff piled up that he’d had to buy just because he’d forgotten to bring them. He’d left no fewer than seven toothbrushes behind when they’d shipped out four years ago. 

His final preparations were interrupted when the door chime sounded. 

“ Come.”

T'Pol entered and he nearly stopped breathing. She was wearing the unbelievably tight white desert suit that left really little to the imagination. Since the one she wore on Vulcan had been torn and blood-soaked, he realized that she had more than one of those. 

“Let me guess, Hoshi can't wait to get going?” he asked, trying to withstand the urge to just stare at her and dribble like an idiot. 

“ Whilst Ensign Sato is indeed most impatient to start her assignment, I came to you with a request.”

“Please state your request, Commander,” he said with an amused grin, playfully matching her formality. 

“Trip, I would wish that you stay with me at my mother's house.” 

Unlike the first time she had extended an invitation to Vulcan, she didn't express it nonchalantly while packing her duffel bag. She was making a conscious effort to remain demonstratively neutral. But Trip had spent way too much time studying little nuances in her behavior and the look in her eyes. Her back was slightly arched, emphasizing her shapely bottom even more and she didn't quite manage to look him straight in his eyes. She was apprehensive. 

The use of his nickname caught him by surprise, however and it was a struggle to remain neutral. His first reflex was to wrestle an admission of her motives for that offer out of her, but just in time he remembered Jon's advice to let her call the shots. His thinking about how to react to the invitation had created a little awkward pause. He decided to start with a rather neutral question that evaded the elephant in the room. 

“What about Hoshi, she's going to stay there too? We can't leave her all alone in the compound.” 

“ Apparently two of her friends from the academy live in the compound and she is most eager to 'catch up with them'. She has already issued a precautionary apology for not being able to spend much of her spare time with us.”

Trip smiled. Leave it to Hoshi to make the most of a situation like that. He rolled up his blanket and stuffed it into his duffel bag. 

“Why are you taking a blanket?” she asked, still standing near the door. 

“ Well the blanket in the guest room is a bit on the thick side. I got quite hot under it the last time.”

He could perceive her hesitation before she spoke again. 

“I had hoped you would agree to share a room with me. The master bedroom has several blankets. You should be quite comfortable with a light summer blanket at current temperatures.” 

This was just a typical T'Pol statement. He sometimes wondered if she underestimated him. She had given the important bit in a short half-sentence, before hurriedly garnishing it with a whole host of additional information. What was she expecting? That the huge honking center-piece would have fallen off his mental stack by the time she had finished the sentence? Or maybe she was just used to confusing people like that by now. 

He controlled his reaction to that one suggestion that was now – unsurprisingly – his entire focus of attention, and sat down on the edge of the bunk. 

“ Would you sit with me, T'Pol?”

She nodded silently and slowly sat down on the bunk, preserving a suitable distance between them.

He looked at her in fond exasperation. “I don't bite.”

There was a little pause, while she evidently weighed up any of the responses she could have made to that. Then, without making any of them, she adjusted her position. She was now sitting right next to him. He gently took her hand and she offered neither protest nor resistance. 

“ If there is one constant in the universe, it's the fact that the two of us are hopeless at communicating with each other. I've seen the master bedroom only once when I realigned the environmental controls in it. It only has one bed – a big one – but only one. From just about anyone else an offer to share it is a rather obvious hint, but so, I once mistakenly assumed, was watching you get naked right before my eyes and kiss the daylights out of me.”

He could see the apprehension in her face and he steeled himself to calmly continue his monologue. For both their sakes, he had to get this right; had to find out exactly where both of them stood. He couldn’t face a second round of what he’d gone through before. This time he was getting things crystal clear before he took a second, and this time irretrievable, step.

“ So apparently I  can’t  rely on what looks like an obvious indication. I need a clear, conscious articulation of your motives, T'Pol. Are you in it for real? Is this another experimental ‘exploration of Human sexuality’ or will your opinion be the same after we wake up tomorrow? I would love nothing more than sharing a bed with you and not only for four weeks, but for the rest of my life. I need to know if your intentions are the same.”

She wordlessly handed him a PADD.

“What's this?” 

“ It is a formal request to remove the bulkhead between my quarters and those of Crewman Fuller to create a space big enough to house two persons. I wanted to submit it before we leave in the hope that the construction work will be finished by the time we return. Captain Archer has already given his approval, but since it involves structural changes, it needs to be signed off by the ship's chief engineer as well. You will also notice that it contains an attachment with an official exemption from the no-fraternization regulations – signed by Admiral Gardner.”

“Wow, you left nothing to chance, did you?” he commented, amazed by her preparation. Now it became clear what she needed the forty-eight hours for and why Hoshi had been grinning like a Cheshire cat. As the comms officer she would of course know about T'Pol's communications with Starfleet. 

“Here's my answer,” he said, signing the approval with a grin. Once done, he grabbed her head gently and kissed her – a kiss that began as equally gentle, but ended up with all the passion he’d kept reined in and tamped down for so long. 

“Are you not disappointed that this moment was not appropriately... romantic?” she asked breathlessly after what had felt like the longest kiss he had ever shared with a woman. 

“ T'Pol, the thought that,...” he looked at the clock, “in about fourteen hours I will wake up and the first thing I'm going to see when I open my eyes is your face… now that's  properly romantic. Unless of course you plan to wake me up at the butt crack 'o dawn with that gong.”

“ No,  ashayam , I shall wait until after you have had the opportunity to look at my face after waking up.”

He smiled. Right now it felt as though he’d never stop smiling for as long as he lived. “What does that mean? ‘Asha...’”

“‘ Ashayam’. It means beloved.”

Hell, this day was just getting better and better. “Now there's something I could get used to. I'll have to work on my pronunciation though.”

“ I would be quite content if you used one of the human appellations, although I would prefer one that doesn't double as a food item.”

“ There go honey and sweetcakes,” he replied with a chuckle. “Darlin' it is then.”

She nodded her approval. 

“ Well then my beloved non-food item. Let's go before Hoshi bursts from impatience.”

“ Agreed.”

=/\=

“ It was about time I finally got to fly one of the things,” Hoshi told her passengers, although for some 'mysterious' and utterly amusing reason they didn’t seem to be paying much attention as she piloted the shuttle away from the ship. “I've probably done the most simulator hours of any Starfleet officer without ever getting to drive the real thing.”

“ Thanks for telling us  ** before ** we’re on the ground, Hoshi.”

She giggled at his mock complaint. She knew that neither officer would have let her near the controls if they didn’t have full confidence in her piloting skills. Now that by the look of things T'Pol had gone through with her plan to fork him to the plate, they had too much to lose to entrust their lives to an inept pilot. 

“ Will you accompany us for the evening meal?” the Vulcan offered as Hoshi set the shuttle down near the house that was now T'Pol's possession.

“ No thanks, T'Pol. I can’t wait to meet Linda and Zoe. We haven't seen each other for years. When do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?”

“Will you manage to wake up before nine o'clock, ashayam? I would not want to disappoint you by leaving my half of the bed empty by the time you are awake,” she heard T'Pol ask, and the young ensign's jaw hit the floor. As the first officer's foremost confidant she had expected that T'Pol would be a little less restricted in her behavior towards Trip when she was the only witness, but this was a downright intimate address for a Vulcan. And she had openly revealed that they were going to share a bed! 

She carefully observed Trip. After all it wasn't a given that he would be comfortable with the fact that T'Pol basically announced what her plans were. He was grinning like a loon, so he probably couldn't care less or most likely was even happy about it. After all the dancing-around-each-other that the two of them had done, he was probably wanting to scream the news to the whole planet anyway. 

She grinned and waved them goodbye as they left the shuttle still arguing if it was appropriate for her to wake him up prematurely if it became necessary. Those two were just too funny at times. 

=/\=

Night had fallen over Vulcan, and Trip found himself in a large bed with T'Pol right beside him. They were lying close together on their backs, but with no direct contact. It was not what Trip had expected, but he was willing to let her decide the speed at which they were taking this journey. 

They had started off the night-time program with a neuropressure session, which according to her was an integral part of the intimate life of Vulcan pairs. Which certainly gave an interesting aspect to the fact that they had already more than a year of experience with it. 

T'Pol had brought about a moment of comedy, when she had – out of habit – crossed her arms over her naked breasts. Considering that she had once revealed much more than her bust and initiated the idea of sharing a bed – most likely not exclusively to sleep in it – this sudden return to 'being shy' felt somewhat funny. Having noticed his failed attempts at stifling his laughter, however, she had let her arms fall away. The slightly exasperated eye-roll, that had clearly been directed at herself, lent substance to his theory. The more the session progressed, however, she had become more and more introspective, apprehensive even. Considering how brazenly she had initiated the only sex encounter they had had so far, he wondered what was wrong with her or if he misinterpreted the situation. As if knowing his thoughts, she surprised him with a question. 

“ Trip, would you grant me a request to wait for a day or two before we engage in sexual relations?”

Trip spluttered as he was caught unprepared by the blunt question. He needed a moment to regain his composure before he rolled over to his side to look at her. 

“ T'Pol, what kind of question is that? Of course I'll wait as long as it takes for you to get comfortable with having sex.”

“ I am not ‘uncomfortable’. In fact I quite desire your touch, but I need to take precautionary measures tomorrow.”

“You're worried about conceiving,” he said in understanding. 

“ I am not talking about contraceptives, but sedatives.”

Trip lifted his head, his brows furrowed in disbelief. “You want me to knock you out before having sex?” 

“ I was not under the influence of sedatives during our previous sexual encounter. It was my fear of easing my control that made me unable to react to the stimulation.”

“ Isn't controlling your emotions what Vulcans do? What they have to do?”

“ Yes that is true and I must caution you. Seeing me without full control over my emotions might be unsettling, but I cannot have a satisfying sexual encounter with you if I suppress the sensations and emotions it elicits.”

“ That's where the seven year thing comes from, isn't it? You’re afraid of losing control, even if it is deliberate.”

“ Yes. The 'seven year thing' is called  _ pon-farr _ . It strips Vulcans of all rational thought and emotional control and forces us to mate. If we don't, the blood fever kills us. Most Vulcans are so afraid of relaxing their control they never mate unless forced to do so by the blood fever.”

“ How many years until you are due?”

“Females do not usually experience the blood fever, only the males. The same symptoms can however be caused for females due to influence of viral or bacterial infections, as happened to me shortly before the Xindi mission.” 

Trip had listened intently, wanting to understand exactly what was going on here, but now he lifted his head again and saw T'Pol looking back at him in the moonlit night. 

“Frankly T'Pol, I don't want you to drug yourself just so you can moan and groan when we have sex. I’ll admit it wasn't exactly thrillin’ last time with you lyin’ there in silence lookin’ at me as if it didn’t make the least bit of difference to you while I humped you like a horny dog. But if that's how Vulcan biology works then I'll have to get used to it.” 

“Trip, it didn't make the least bit of difference to me – not then. When I suppress my emotions I also have to suppress the sensations that cause them. I felt almost nothing. That is how most Vulcan females give themselves to their mates when they are in the throes of the blood-fever. The males are so far gone in their madness they don't notice anything. I know this will unsettle you, but I was nothing more than a sperm receptacle. That encounter was supremely disagreeable for both of us. To use my mother's words: ‘We merely got the mechanical basics right’.” 

He furrowed his brow as a question popped up in his mind. He felt bad at what he’d heard. 

“ T'Pol. If you knew you wouldn't feel the damnedest thing, why did you invite me to it? I mean, if the most gorgeous body in the galaxy is peeled naked before your eyes, there's not much left to guess about the situation. You gave yourself in like a piece of meat.”

His voice broke slightly as hurt and anger mixed in his mind, but he willed himself to soften his speech. 

“That you didn't know that you'd hurt me as well, I won't hold against you. We never talked about it and I’m guessin’ the expectations of human males in a sexual encounter aren't taught at the Vulcan science academy. But that you humiliated yourself like that – why?” 

This was evidently a subject she’d rather have avoided. Nevertheless, he read without difficulty the way she gathered herself together to admit a hard truth, trusting him to accept it. “Corporal Cole was interested in you at the time. She was everything that I was not. She could communicate her intentions better, is most pleasing to look at and reminded you of your home. I surmised that she would soon initiate intimate activities and in a desperate attempt I sought to demonstrate that I was willing to engage in sexual relations as well, even though I knew it would be less than satisfactory for me.”

“ And you thought I'd just be happy to stick it somewhere warm and wet to get myself off.” He was hurt and – there was no denying it – a little disgusted by the thought that she’d understood so little of what the occasion had really meant to him. The harsh words left his mouth before he could think better of them.

She took the blow without flinching, with the fine courage he loved so much, as he loved pretty well everything else about her. “I ask forgiveness, beloved.”

After a moment, his hand reached over to clasp hers, a gesture of regret, forgiveness and reconciliation. “I already told you, you couldn't know ‘bout me. But at least we're not repeatin’ the mistake and botchin’ the second attempt, too. This time we’re  talkin’. ”

Suddenly a thought hit him – something she had said earlier. 

“You talked about that night with your mother?” he asked, his voice cracking at the thought. 

“ Yes, with her katra in my mind she saw my most private thoughts anyway. Apparently my parents, unlike many other Vulcans, had a rather satisfying intimate life.”

“ I'm not sure that I would want to get sex lessons from my mom – or yours for that matter.”

“ I was rather uncomfortable as well with her... graphic descriptions, but she gave me invaluable advice. However, I was still relieved to have her katra removed from my mind. I did not care much for her blunt comments on the technical merit of our intimate techniques... or lack thereof.”

Trip pushed his face into the pillow, laughing. Partly in mortification at the thought of having his best sexual efforts made the subject of a scathing critique by his mother-in-law, but partly because the whole damned situation was just so hilarious.

“ Sorry 'bout that darlin',” he said after composing himself again. “That sounded just like your mom. So she told you to let go of your emotional control?”

“ Indeed.”

“ Okay, since you’re obviously set on tryin’ it out. What do we need to prepare for?”

“ When I let go of my control, I will most likely articulate myself the way you are familiar with from your encounters with human... or non-human... females.”

Trip felt a burning sensation on his face as embarrassment gripped him. 

“ However,” she went on, matter-of-factly, “I might fall back into my native language, so we will need to record one or more encounters so I can teach you the meaning of my words. It is imperative that you learn to understand what my desires are when I'm no longer fully coherent.”

“Talkin’ dirty in Vulcan?” he asked, highly amused all over again by the revelation. 

“ Vulcan has a broad variety of vulgar terms and expletives, which are, however, never used by one in control of his or her emotions.” She looked at him with mock severity; the oft-discussed subject of the necessity for a ‘cuss box’ in Main Engineering had evidently reached her ears. “My mother, however, claims that my father used to swear so badly it scared off wildlife when he let go of his control.”

Trip pressed his face into the pillow and laughed even more. 

“ Okay, so you get all swivel-eyed and I need to learn Vulcan dirty talk.”

“ Do not take this lightly, ashayam. Once my coherence is compromised some of my senses might be impaired. My mother used to lose her sense of hearing. If you deny me what I desire in such a state, I might take what I crave by forceful means.”

This sounded like a very happy situation indeed to Trip, but he tried to remain serious about it. “And that's where the sedative comes in, so I can knock you out if you start hurtin’ me.” 

“ Indeed.”

“ Frankly, I’m startin’ to understand why you Vulcans are so afraid of it. If you think you  can  get something out of it for yourself too, I'm willin’ to try anything. After all this isn't supposed to be a one-way affair. Besides, I know you won't hurt me, even if you are out of it.”

“ What makes you so sure about it?” She was obviously hoping for reassurance on that score.

“ Been there.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “After the incident with the  Seleya you were completely out of control. You hissed and spat at everyone. It looked to me as if you couldn't see or hear a single thing, so we might need to prepare for that. I had to shoot all of Phlox's hypos into your neck ‘cause you weren’t lettin’ anyone near you, except me. You still growled at me, pro-forma probably, but then lifted your head to give me access to your neck. Cap'n was quite annoyed. I think he still had a bit of a crush on you back then.”

He felt her arm snake around his waist. 

“ It comforts me that I am still able to sense your presence even when my control is compromised.”

“Looks like you really start ‘explorin’ human sexuality’ right now,” he said, kissed her and they began their slow drift into a very restful sleep. 


	2. Juicy Details

  


T'Pol stood in the morning sun, wearing another of her white desert-suits which inspired her beloved's imagination so much. She couldn't tell why, but she had the distinct feeling that he was standing behind the curtains, observing her posterior. She could not quite understand why humans were so fascinated by a body part that served a vital, but not necessarily tasteful, purpose. 

This was the second time she felt as though she was having a premonition or the ability to sense Trip's emotions. The first instance was when he woke up in the morning.

Since she had been awake quite a significant time before him, she had positioned herself on her side, observing his peacefully relaxed face while waiting for his sleep to end. 

True to his own prediction he appeared most pleased to meet her glance right after waking up, although his attention had soon been drawn away and captivated by her bare bust as the blanket had slipped down to around her waist ‘by accident’. That was the first time she noticed that she seemed to sense his pleasure, even though they were not in touch-telepathic contact. She had heard of the human saying 'the eyes are the windows of the soul', and she reasoned that his most elated look might have contributed to her premonition.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of the approaching shuttle. The white Starfleet vessel, left behind with them before Enterprise departed, looked slightly out of place in a sky full of copper-colored Vulcan shuttles. To say she wasn't witnessing the best landing in Starfleet history would be an understatement as she watched Ensign Sato set down the craft in a rather haphazard fashion. She became worried that the young officer's reunion with her friends might have included the intake of copious amounts of alcoholic beverages, but her acute sense of smell alleviated her fears as she entered the shuttle. 

“I take it your celebration was a long one?” T'Pol remarked dryly as she closed the hatch and took her place in the co-pilot’s seat. Ensign Sato did not look too well rested. 

“It wasn't too long actually,” the young human explained, as they checked their items on the pre-takeoff checklist. “Just lots of dancing in one of the civilian joints in the compound.”

“On or off the stage?” she asked dead-pan, knowing that with the only _seemingly_ shy human female there could well be a story to tell.

There was a slightly abashed giggle coming from the direction of the pilot’s seat. 

“Okay, twice **on** stage. The rest off it.”

T'Pol raised an eyebrow. The ship's comms officer was still relatively young, though well over twenty years of age. The advancement of maturity, however, had obviously not diminished her penchant for provoking appreciative male looks by divesting herself of her clothing for an audience. The ensign had apparently seen her minuscule reaction. 

“Oh, come on, Commander, I barely get to do it these days. How often do we get to go to places where nobody knows I'm a Starfleet officer?”

“Such activity does not exactly lend itself to preserving your anonymity.”

“You should try doing a striptease for Trip,” her friend ventured in an obvious attempt to lead the conversation in a different direction. “Trust me, he'll go wild.”

T'Pol heard the teasing tone in Ensign Sato's voice and decided that two could 'play this game'. 

“Perhaps we should first visit one of your performances, so he can appreciate a professional at work before being exposed to my inept attempts at the art,” she returned the barb.

“Tuesdays, twice a night,” the ensign returned, equally dead-pan. “I'm going to make the most of my time here. Although in most cases it'll be more like a dance with little clothing instead of a full striptease. There's nothing more intoxicating than a bus load of guys gawking at you as if you are the most beautiful creature in the galaxy.”

T'Pol stared straight ahead, trying not to show her perplexity at the dry riposte. It was obvious that the young linguist had comprehensively won this round of 'teasing' by stunning her into silence. 

“By the way. What do I have to do to get you to call me Hoshi?” the young woman asked as they descended toward Mount Seleya. 

“Requesting me to do so would be a start. Though obviously it would only be appropriate when we were both off-duty.”

“Wait a minute. You ’ve insisted on calling me ensign even though we've shared every single detail of our lives and been best friends for over three years, because I never formally asked you to call me by my first name?”

“Vulcans do never use the first name without being requested to do so. It would be a breach of privacy. I assumed you were aware of that.”

Silence filled the cockpit as the young officer performed a much smoother landing this time. 

“You have a point,” the linguist admitted. “I should have known. I applied human standards to our situation. So to make it official: Would you accept my request to call me by my first name in private conversation?”

“Of course, Hoshi.”

They were still sitting in their seats, despite having now arrived at the monastery.

“May I offer some unasked-for advice?” Hoshi said and T'Pol cautiously nodded her consent.

“You assume too much. I think that’s part of the problems you had with Trip. You think someone should know or sense something, when it’s sometimes easier to just _say_ something. Look, the mistake was mine, but why didn't you remind me at some point a year or two ago?” 

“I do not know.”

“We'll work on that,” her friend said and opened the hatch, smiling. “But first I want to see those caves.”

=/\=

“Tally ho, coachman,” Trip quipped theatrically with a forward-pointing arm gesture, earning him surreptitious glances from the two pilots.

He knew he was probably making a fool of himself and definitely not leaving a brilliant first impression on his two Vulcan hosts, but somehow he couldn't rein in his euphoria as quickly as he had hoped. Hell, he’d spent a whole night with the woman he loved and instead of shooting him down the next morning, something he had feared despite all her claims to the contrary, she had greeted him with a kiss. She had even endured his morning breath to do so. And there was no way that the blanket had just ‘accidentally’ slid down to her waist. 

If the two Vulcans providing shuttle service to his meeting with Professor Solan of the Vulcan Science Academy were questioning his sanity, they were doing so remarkably silently. He started to force himself to adopt a more serious attitude. 

What he really wanted to do was stick two fat cigars in the mouths of his two bemused pilots and pop open the champagne, but he was on his way to meet one of the Vulcan engineering masterminds and it wasn’t the best idea to prove to T’Pol that she had chosen well by embarrassing her in the eyes of her fellow Vulcans. 

Slowly he fought the idiotic grin off his face and grew serious – at least on the outside. Inside his mind was still dominated by euphoric happiness.

=/\=

T’Pol closed her eyes and stopped her descen t into the catacombs. Euphoria was not an expected sensation when walking down the ancient stairs toward subterranean caves full of stale air. Now she was convinced that she was somehow able to sense his emotions, even though irregularly and only for short periods. There was a chance that this was merely a lingering after-effect of the rather prolonged and intensive touch telepathic contact caused by her head having rested the whole night on his bare chest, but the scientist in her did not believe in vague solutions. She needed to find out. 

When she opened her eyes, she noticed that Hoshi was already scouting ahead. Any other human would probably have stopped to ask if everything was fine, but throughout their friendship, that now spanned three years, Hoshi had gotten used to her habit of sometimes stopping and closing her eyes to deal with an unexpected emotion immediately instead of shelving it for later meditation. It was not a method she could afford to employ in a duty situation, but she had come to do so frequently in off-duty time as it allowed her to process influences immediately, which in turn reduced the needed amount of meditation.

“Oh my God!”

Although Ensign Sato’s cry did not sound like a distress call and was in fact followed by loud, nervous laughter, T’Pol hastened to reach the site of whatever discovery the young human had made. Once she arrived at Hoshi’s side, she stopped immediately, desperately trying to keep her outward signs of shock to an acceptable minimum.

The view before her made it abundantly clear why access to this archaeological site was strictly regulated and limited to very few scientists. Their ancient ancestors had been obviously a lot more primitive and savage than they were described in the stories she had been told as a child, and she had always surmised that _those_ were exaggerated in order to scare children into more diligence in their effort to learn emotional control. 

The ancient drawings on the walls before her made the frightening fabrications of her mother appear like a first successful report on evolutionary progress. She sent her young companion a questioning glance in search of an explanation. 

“I can see how that side is much more interesting,” Hoshi explained with an unmistakably mischievous undertone. “But the actual start is over there.” 

T’Pol turned around towards the indicated corner of the cave waiting for further explanation.

“It’s a mixture of narration and illustrated story,” the linguist continued. “I can’t make sense of all the symbols yet, but it seems to begin with a clan feud. Unless you know what _Sh'hiran'lin'iijyliunh'rei'iy'iukn'hy'wen'lhia'ehrm'n_ means?”

T’Pol fought the instinctive gasp, and it took another closing of eyes and a few breathing techniques before she felt composed enough to answer the question.

“It is the name of my clan,” she admitted, which elicited an abashed ‘oops’ from her friend. 

“In that case, T’Pol, meet your ancestors. Your clan, it appears, was attacked by _‘dvinsu ekon-ak’ – ‘_ those who serve the divine eye’ _._ And a great battle began…”

Ignoring her confusion, she tried to divide her attention evenly between listening to Ensign Sato’s translation of the ancient script and inspecting the disturbingly detailed images that supplemented the written narrative. 

While the young linguist read out the account of heroic deeds by various warriors in the battle, she thought sarcastically to herself – ‘ _at least we won_ ’.” It was the only redeeming aspect of the imagery. Hundreds of warriors, accompanied by trained _sehlats_ and other predatory wildlife – trained to kill and mutilate their opponents – were depicted brutalizing each other in the most unspeakable ways. 

“Apparently your clan won and returned back to their base in great triumph,” Hoshi said, summarizing the last of the ancient script on this side of the cave.

Turning around, T’Pol asked the question that had been on her mind since she had seen the imagery on the other wall of the cave.

“And this battle is in some way related to the debauchery on these images?”

“Trip would probably say – ‘boy, did your folks know how to party’,” the young officer replied in unmistakable amusement. 

“To me it appears that these are images of separate events,” T’Pol said, pointing to the frescoes in question. “This one, while bacchanal and vulgar, seems to preserve a minute remainder of civility in the fact that the males sate their desires with only one partner, while this… This is unspeakable.”

She inspected the second image that depicted some sort of celebration among the victorious warriors. The over-sized table was laden with more food than they could possibly consume, including copious amounts of meat. Drinks and more food were served by exclusively female, bare-breasted or completely unclothed servants. Other servants gave themselves up to the duty of sating the carnal desires of the warriors. Shockingly, some of them served more than one male simultaneously, while some of the celebrating males presented their bare backside for intimate perusal by higher-ranked members of the warrior caste. 

“They are separate events,” Hoshi confirmed. “But they are two events of the same celebration. The ‘civilized’ one is reserved for ‘those who are never and always touching and not touched’, which I would guess is a metaphor for married couples and what we see is a ritual communal mating act to ‘bring back to the clan the life that was lost on the battlefield'”.

“The second celebration was for unmarried and widowed folk and an everything-goes orgy, basically. I'm going to guess here, but coming to your wedding day as a virgin was not a concept your ancestors were believing in at that time. One passage said that some of the warriors were hired from outside the clan, so my best guess here is that this is a rather hefty way of increasing genetic diversity and probably get more babies and perhaps a few more marriages when one of the unmarried warriors knocked up one of the women. Leaves the question of how they found out who the father is or if they even cared about such 'details'.” 

T’Pol watched the explanation, following her friend’s finger whenever she ran it along the elegant symbols while quoting directly from the ancient writing. 

“I would suspect that everyone mates with his own wife in the 'married folk party' and I guess the military uniformity of their technique means that the sole purpose of it was to get their wives pregnant.”

T'Pol wondered why Hoshi noticed such a detail, as that was how the act was supposed to be performed. 

“What other ways are there to impregnate a female? They position themselves to facilitate vaginal penetration and the male inseminates...”

“I know about the birds and the bees, T'Pol,” came the interruption from her smiling friend. “I just don't think that every couple preferred the good old missionary routine. I would have expected a doggy here or there or someone on the table. So if they all do it the same way can only mean it is meant specifically to maximize the chances of pregnancies. Whereas the second congregation, now that seems more geared to maximum fun...” 

T'Pol saw Hoshi stop mid-sentence as if she remembered something. 

“We didn't quite reach that part in our talks about the ins and outs of humanity, did we,” the young human added after the short pause.

“Except the occasional recollection of past performances of your 'striptease' and the advantages of not wearing clothing in one’s home, we have rarely touched matters of human sexuality, yet” T'Pol replied, dryly, but not without a hint of amusement. “This might however become necessary... for obvious reasons.”

“Are you telling me the two of you spent the first night together actually _sleeping_?” Hoshi asked in bemused disbelief. 

“There are complications due to Vulcan physiology that made immediate sexual relations impractical,” T'Pol said. “But it is a topic I would prefer to discuss in the privacy of my home or your guest quarters. If, of course, you are comfortable doing so,” she added conscientiously. To be sure, nothing so far had given her the impression that her companion was uncomfortable discussing intimate matters, but it was impolite to make that assumption.

She saw Hoshi look at the clock and nod. “I'd suggest my place. Unless you want to spend a bit more time looking at the galaxy’s oldest porn magazine. I can check out the other caves another time. We've been in here over an hour anyway. I doubt Minister T'Pau warned us about the missing ventilation without a good reason. “

“Agreed.”

=/\=

Trip looked around. Without warning the world around him had faded and he found himself in a surreal world that was... well, nothing. Everything was white and completely empty. He wanted to look around some more, but suddenly he stared into T'Pol's wide-with-surprise eyes. 

As quickly as he had gotten there, the strange world vanished again after mere moments.

=/\=

Thankfully her quarters in the human compound had shades to avoid inquisitive looks from outside, so she could wear her favorite at-home clothes – nothing.

Not that the shades were strictly necessary for someone with an exhibitionist streak, but Hoshi didn't want to scandalize any Vulcans who might pass by outside and get a glimpse of her, and the situation with T'Pol on a visit could be misunderstood. Nobody would regard a Vulcan talking to a naked human as a commonplace occurrence.

She was now rummaging around in her chest of drawers. Knowing that the topic of human sexuality would someday come up in her friend's thorough research of each and every facet of human behavior, she had long collected material that might prove interesting to the Vulcan. Now she was searching for the PADD. 

“Hoshi?”

The tone and the half-asking half-gasping nature of her speech told the young woman that her guest was utterly stumped by something. She wondered if her bending over had presented a too-graphic image to her friend, who was sitting behind her on the bunk. She turned around and was surprised to see an eyebrow configuration that was normally T'Pol's rendition of a howling guffaw. 

“Are you sure that you really only performed your striptease routine yesterday?”

Hoshi could feel a blush creeping up her cheeks. “Ok, I was a bit tipsy doing the repeat performance later in the night and got a bit too brazen. I did a lap dance, non-contact,” she added hastily. “There was this cute guy, who looked vaguely like someone I really like and he had smiled at me so nicely all the time…” 

“He appears to have indeed appreciated the performance. He left his communications code on your  posterior,” she heard T'Pol report blandly. 

She gasped and giggled nervously. “Well, he obviously really wanted me to have it,” she said, bending over backwards in the vain attempt to get a look at her own butt. “It’s survived three showers by now.”

“It's on the left buttock. Fairly low down. I decline to speculate about the pose you struck at the time.”

“Take the hand mirror,” she asked her guest, coming to a halt in front of the full-height mirror of the wardrobe. She waited until T'Pol had found the correct angle for the hand mirror so she could read it in the big one.

“Well, Goldilocks definitely gets extra-credit for his skill,” she said appreciatively, looking at the hastily scribbled number. “He must have incredibly nimble fingers getting that written on my butt without me noticing.”

“Goldilocks?”

“Well, he had bright blond hair and some locks, so, not knowing his name I call him Goldilocks,” Hoshi explained giddily.

“Are you planning to contact him?”

“I'm not sure,” she said. “He was really nice-looking, and cute too. But you never know. Perhaps Trip could help me.”

“How can Trip help? You want him to contact the person to assess his intentions?”

“Something like that. If Goldi wants more than just getting into my pants, even when I'm not wearing any, he'll be there next Tuesday. Trip could try to get into a conversation with him. They usually find out quite quickly if the other guy's motives are ulterior.”

“You did not mean it in jest when you told me this morning that you will repeat the performance?”

Hoshi smiled in amusement at the disbelieving tone in her friend's voice, but then detected the note of anxiety in it. She was quick to realize the reason for this, and thus the next words did not come as a surprise.

“I am not sure how well I would react to seeing Trip aroused by watching you undress,” T'Pol admitted.

“First of all,” Hoshi explained. “I'm not exactly shabby looking, but I doubt I'm going to distract him away from you and knowing you, even if nothing happened between you last night, you've given him a very good look at parts of your anatomy by now.”

She smiled at the slight green-ish tinge of a blush spreading on her friend's cheeks. For any other species it would mean T'Pol was sick, but a green-faced Vulcan was the equivalent of a red-faced human. 

“And besides, I know Trip. If I ask him to watch another guy, because I'm not sure about his intentions, he will – if at all – perhaps give me a cursory glance. He’ll watch Goldilocks like a hawk.”

“While I spend the time getting 'pointers' for my own routine, presumably,” she heard T'Pol remark dryly. 

“ _That one_ actually _was_ meant in jest,” Hoshi said. “If you started to dance and undress, he'd know that it’s not you.  He’d know that you were following someone else's idea.”

“What would 'be me'?” she asked. 

Hoshi sat down and thought for a moment. 

“I think you're the subtle type,” she analyzed. “You'd give him a glance, but not all of it. If he came home, you would wait for him in a semi-transparent negligee rather than stark naked.”

“Trust me, I am _not_ 'the subtle type' when it comes to sexual relations.”

She listened to T'Pol's explanation of what it meant for a Vulcan to try and have a satisfying sexual encounter with a human. When T'Pol came to the part of losing senses, and Trip's theory that she would probably go deaf and blind temporarily, Hoshi couldn't help but laugh; but she fought it back down, when she saw the other woman's slightly offended look. 

“I'm sorry. That wasn't nice,” Hoshi apologized. “We have a saying – 'Love makes you blind' – it was just funny for a moment that you seem to take this concept quite literally. I guess it won't be so funny for you.”

“It is nothing to worry about,” her friend answered and Hoshi noticed with relief that she seemed mollified by the apology. “It is a temporary impairment as my neural pathways are overloaded by the additional stimulus. It is not dangerous, however even if it occurs frequently. My mother has monitored her own vital signs countless times and came to the conclusion that this temporary overload is not detrimental to the health.”

“Trip has his work cut out for him,” Hoshi said, while donning civilian clothes. “Come on, we'll hit the shops. You need something 'subtle'.”

=/\=

Trip waited patiently as his host reconfigured the subspace console to present its interface in Human Standard. In a way it was funny that a console in an area of the academy that no human before him had ever had access to would even provide the option. 

Professor Solan, some sort of very far-flung uncle of T'Pol’s and one of the more prominent members of her clan, was an immensely easy-to-talk-to character. He had been easily recognizable as one of the two Vulcan overseers who had given them a hard time during the Warp 3 program, but he seemed to have come to a better understanding of and tolerance for humanity over the years. 

The reasons for Vulcans to study something as ancient as Earth's propeller planes had been initially somewhat elusive, but considering they had places like The Forge, where nothing electronic would work, the wish to learn at least some of the principles behind Earth's rugged bird-whackers became clearer.

The configuration change was complete and Trip initiated the connection after a thankful nod to his host, who left the room. 

=/\=

"Starfleet Archive of Engineering, Ensign Carruthers. Please state your security authorization."

"Tucker, Charles III Foxtrot-Lima-Golf-Mike fifteen-five-eight."

"Accepted," the young woman declared after typing in the clearance. "What can I do for you, Commander?"

"I need access to some historical design documents from the mid- to late- 20th century."

"Data files before the year 2005 are incomplete, but if you have sufficient information to search for, I can try to find something."

"Okay. Could you try to find data about an airplane called 'Douglas DC-3', please?"

"Negative, sir," she answered after typing in the data.

"Crud. Could you try 'Lisunov Li-2' or 'Basler BT-67'?"

"Both negative, sir," she answered with an apologetic expression.

"Dammit! Okay, try the 'Antonov AN-2' please."

"Also negative," she answered, and watched the tongue of her conversation partner roll inside his cheek.

"You said you have everything after 2005?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then try to find the 'Shijiazhuang Y-5'. That's a Chinese copy of the AN-2 and they were still buildin' it in 2005."

"I found it, sir," she said and then added hesitantly: "That's one ugly beast."

"What do you expect, Ensign?" he replied with an indulgent smile. "It's a Chinese copy of a Ukrainian design that was almost 60 years old at the time. But it's one of the greatest planes ever built."

"I'll take your word for it, sir," she answered with a smile of her own. Commander Tucker was every bit as charming as he was rumored to be. "Do you need anything else?"

"Yeah, I need engine design documents. We won't get anywhere with the Shvetsovs. Do you have anything about an engine called 'Glushenkov TVD 20'?"

Her fingers rattled through the keystrokes again. "Negative, sir."

"Hm. Okay, how about 'Pratt and Whitney PT6A'?"

"We have something. In fact there are dozens of variants."

"Anyone of them named '67R'?"

"Yes, sir," she nodded happily.

"Great! Please bundle them up with the plane design specs and upload the whole shebang to these contact data."

"Um, sir," she started nervously. "According to my indications, the data belong to a private residence on Vulcan?"

"Yep, that's exactly where I am staying. This house belongs to Commander T'Pol, a Starfleet officer with a higher security clearance than mine, so you can safely transfer it, Ensign."

Seeing the commander’s smile, she returned the gesture and started preparing the information for upload. Though just to make sure, she’d verify his statement before starting to transmit it. 

"Just making sure, sir," she explained. 

"Of course. Thank you, Ensign."

=/\=

Trip came home to their domicile and stopped dead in his tracks just as he had closed the door. 

T'Pol had seemingly not noticed his arrival and continued preparing the evening meal at the kitchen counter. She wore a white kitchen apron and … well she wore an apron, and that was it. While it covered her front – which was after all the purpose of the garment – her behind was completely bare except for the straps, which were tied around her neck and her waist. Her firm, shapely rear-end wiggled slightly whenever she grabbed a new fruit or vegetable from the basket to wash it under the running water. 

“Sweet mother of God,” he whispered in delighted shock.

“I take it as a sign of approval, _ashayam_?” she ventured softly with a hint of insecurity in her voice. She did not look back at him. 

“Approval given most emphatically, darlin',” he replied with a chuckle. 

“You may touch my behind, if you so wish, and if you refrain from touching the food,” she explained, still in a very soft voice, forcing him to stifle a laugh. He knew T'Pol too well. It was her way of letting him know that a gentle butt-groping would be 'most agreeable' and most desired right now.

He gently cupped her soft right buttock and leaned in to kiss her. The fruit she was working on fell into the sink as she eagerly returned the gesture. He could see that she quickly closed her eyes after the kiss and re-established her composure and suspected that she had relaxed her control for the tiniest of moments. She soon was back to her calm self, although the faint green flush in her face gave away that this might have been very different a few moments ago.

“You should take a shower. The meal will be ready in ten minutes.”

“I'm smelling a bit, aren't I,” he said, slightly self-conscious. “Sorry, the heat...”

His apology was preempted by a slight head-shake.

“Your smell has not been offensive to me anymore for a long time. But you have touched my posterior and I find the smell of your shampoo most invigorating.”

“You say the sweetest things when I grope your butt while you wash fruit, darlin'.”

With a last gentle squeeze of her gluteal musculature, he made his way toward the shower. 

=/\=

They were sitting across from each other on the small table, eating their meal. The fact that there was a distinctive lack of dead animal on the menu didn't quite bother him at the moment. His dinner might be entirely made up of fruit and weeds, but that little detail paled into obscurity when across of him sat the most gorgeous creature in the galaxy with her well-sculptured anatomy barely hidden by nothing more than a kitchen apron.

She startled him out of his reverie with her next remark. 

“Did you know that Ensign Sato has a habit of undressing for an audience?”

“Stripping? Well, I know she used to do it during her gambling weekends at STC,” he said. “Considering that she seemed to do so purely for her own fun, I wouldn't be surprised if she still does it occasionally. I would guess though that she doesn't get much chance these days. It's hard to find a place where nobody recognizes you.”

“Were you part of her gambling congregations?”

“Are you kidding me? Of course I was. I’d already graduated when Hoshi was a freshman, but hell, you could make a killing on those evenings! Hoshi had a simple rule: if someone had a Royal Flush, she'd be stripping. Mind you, if there was no Royal Flush all night, she'd still do it when the evening was about to end. But, that lured in a lot of folks who only came to see her get naked. Of course those folks were so green behind the ears as far as poker is concerned, they needed mowing. Had we really gone for the jugular, we would have bankrupted them in a single night.” 

“You abused Hoshi's predilection for undressing routines to defraud other players?”

The offended tone in her voice was hard to miss. 

“Other way round darlin'. We had a strict code among ourselves: if someone had lost too much money, we stopped the game – 'we' being the regular crowd. But once word spread about her performances, it attracted a clientèle who didn't care about the game. They just wanted to see a fresh-faced cadet get naked. And some of them didn't quite understand the concept of 'looking but no touching'.”

“And you inflicted heavy financial losses on them as a deterrent.”

“And it was effective, too,” Trip said, nodding to confirm her assessment. “Most of them realized that it wasn't worth losing half a month’s wages and we were soon back to the regular crowd. We were actually quite protective of Hoshi.” 

“So you went because of the games, not because of the 'entertainment',” T'Pol said dryly and Trip could sense the lingering doubt in her words. 

“I'm not sure where you're going with this darlin',” he said, slightly confused. “But yes, the games were the important bit. Starfleet wasn't exactly going out of their way with the entertainment program, so the games were a welcome distraction from the weekly routine. But I'm not gonna lie: Hoshi is not ugly and I knew she did it because she liked it, not because some pimp made her, so I didn't have a reason to feel guilty for watchin’. And, believe it or not, the fact that she was butt naked was entertainin’, but that wasn't even the best thing about her performances.”

T'Pol raised an eyebrow. 

“Hoshi's amazin’ly flexible. She used to put on moves that made your jaw drop to the floor. She could have done that in a winter coat and it would still have been an unbelievable show. Like I said, she's not ugly and the strippin’ was a bonus. But she's one helluva dancer even if the dress stays on. Seriously darlin', what is that all about?”

“She has apparently found an establishment in the human compound where she can resume this interest in performing.”

“The Spearmint Rhino,” he said knowingly. 

“You know the establishment?”

“Most Starfleet people know it, but nobody ever goes there. It's strictly restricted to civilians. So it'll be interesting to know how she got in to begin with. Spearmint Rhino was a chain of strip joints about a hundred and seventy years ago. They went bust before World War III. About ten years ago an Englishman bought the rights to the name and opened a couple of bars by that name – one here in the compound. They are known for their 'entertainment'.”

“I worry about her,” T'Pol admitted. “It does not appear to be a sign of self-respect to bare yourself for an audience. I can understand her predilection for not wearing anything in the privacy of her quarters. It is not entirely disagreeable to wear little clothing, especially at the current daytime temperatures. But doing so in public appears a bit extreme.”

“That would have been true two hundred years ago, when women were forced to do that. But these days... The Spearmint Rhino is a rather strict arrangement. They allow people to perform – striptease, burlesque, stand-up comedy, amateur bands and whatnot, but strictly on a voluntary basis and without payment. Quite a few people started their career in the entertainment business by a first performance in a Rhino.” 

She nodded again.

“Word has it one or two days a week are reserved for 'adult entertainment' and an appropriately aged crowd. And as for the 'baring', Hoshi just likes to be admired. It's a normal, if rare facet of human sexuality. She's an exhibitionist. She likes to be looked at. And take it from a guy, once she starts movin’, you don't really care if she wears anything or not. Her dancin’ is sublime. I never understood why she went for Starfleet instead of becoming a burlesque dancer. She could have been filthy rich and famous by now. And she would have made a profession out of what she likes most.”

T'Pol went silent.  He wasn’t nearly convinced, however, that she was really reassured about whatever was really bothering her.

“What is it, darlin'?” 

“Hoshi will perform again in six days. She has met a male whom she seems most interested in and wants you to 'check out his motives'. For that we would have to visit one of her performances, but I am unsure about my reaction if you become aroused by watching the spectacle.”

“Then we shouldn't go,” he said with conviction, putting his cutlery down. “T'Pol, I _will_ be aroused. That's how nature constructed us. It gave females a body that males are fascinated by, and by the looks of things, evolution was even more successful on Vulcan. A human male who doesn't react to a naked female body is either homosexual or dysfunctional. The former’s a normal occurrence, but the latter is unhealthy. If that makes you uncomfortable, we just won’t go and Hoshi will have to look for a different solution.”

“I know about the evolutionary implications. I am merely unsure about how you will deal with that arousal.”

“Let me put me this way, darlin'. Not counting that I'll spend most of my time watching how that other guy reacts to her every move, I might get hungry, but I know whom I want to have dinner with. And besides, I _have_ seen Hoshi countless times back in the day;  I won’t see anything I haven’t seen before. But I say it again: if you’re even a little bit uncomfortable, we won't go.” 

She gently tugged at the straps of the apron behind her neck. The slipknot opened and the upper half of the apron slid down, baring her breasts. Trip looked at her, dumbfounded. 

“So even if the grass on the other pasture is fairly green, too, you will not jump over the fence,” she half stated, half asked, in an attempt at using a human metaphor, her face flushed with excitement at her own daring. 

“Greener?” he said with a laugh and scooped her up off her chair. “It doesn't get any greener than you, darlin'. You should see your face.” 

She threw the apron away as he carried her naked body towards the bedroom. 


	3. Lessons

Trip put her down on the bed gently, and it didn't take more than his first glance to tell him that T'Pol was apprehensive. She indicated a nondescript bag she’d brought with her, and he looked inside. She nodded when he took out the two boxes it contained. One was unmistakably a human design – a recording device. The second one had Vulcan markings and was undoubtedly a hypospray.

He already had the general idea of how things were intended to play out, but he had his doubts as to how successful this was likely to be. He sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand.

“You really want to record the ruckus we're going to make? You aren't even comfortable with _talkin’_ about intimate matters. I don't want to guess what shade of green your face will be when you hear us makin’ noises that wouldn't be out of place on a farm.”

He didn't feel quite comfortable talking like this about the upcoming – hopefully more satisfying – encounter. It certainly didn't add any romantic elements, but he knew it meant a lot to her to become more compatible with him, so it was necessary to accept the more clinic nature of preparations.

“I will undoubtedly be most uncomfortable with it, as will you, because I want to ask your permission to give the recordings to Hoshi.”

He looked at her with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. It took him a few moments to regain his wits.

“I thought you wanted to teach me to understand what you say. Why the heck would you want to give something like that to Hoshi?”

“I wish to ask her if she would able, and willing, to program a specialized variant of the universal translator for you. The standard one does not translate the vocabulary I am likely to use. Additionally I wish her to make it translate my utterances to something that is palatable to a human.”

“Okay, now you've got me confused. What do you mean by 'palatable to a human'?”

“Vulcans without control are prone to use an immensely crude and vulgar language. I had to plead with my mother's katra to stop reciting the obscenities of her past encounters with my father. And I do not need to be an expert on human sexuality to know that it would spoil the experience for you if I demanded that you 'manhandle my udders until they burst'.”

Trip didn't know whether to groan or laugh, so he did both. She was right, of course. That sort of smack talk would kill the mood more effectively than a cold shower; he was already feeling somewhat less than aroused. He motioned her to sit up and sat down behind her, where he started to perform relaxing neuropressure techniques in a bid to restore at least some sort of atmosphere.

“Ok, I get the idea how that would be a mood killer,” he agreed, pushing his thumbs into the appropriate nodes along her delicate spinal ridge. “I was thinkin’. Since we have four weeks, we don't need to rush things. How about we start lightly – just foreplay.”

“It is a logical proposal, but I cannot guarantee that I will respect that plan once my control is compromised.”

“Trust me, I'm not goin’ to resist if you demand more,” he said with a chuckle, continuing his gentle ministrations.

“I believe I am prepared for a first attempt at 'making love' properly, ashayam,” she said softly and Trip's heart was filled with joy by her use of the human term. He gently pushed her down onto the bed and lay down beside her after shrugging off his uniform and underwear.

“Let go of your control, darlin',” he encouraged her with a whisper into her ear as he started to trace its outline with the tip of his tongue.

=/\=

“I see some things never change,” Zoe Machado said as she walked into the gym at the human compound.

Hoshi, whom she had finally met again since their days at the Academy, was using one of the torturing devices pulling the metal bar down, lifting the weight behind her – and, in true Hoshi fashion, she was doing so butt naked of course.

“Still waiting for your dashing Mister Reed to walk in on you?” she asked, unable to resist a good ribbing.

Her friend sat up, breathing heavily. Her whole body was covered by a glistening layer of sweat. The weight fell down noisily as she let go of the handle.

“The dashing Mister Reed had four full years to ‘walk in on me’. He didn't even have the balls to ask me out on a date. What am I supposed to do – beg?”

“You could have asked him yourself, you know,” Zoe replied and grinned mischievously. “I don't think anyone who saw you on stage last night would buy your 'shy wallflower' act.”

“I did Zoe. I asked him more than once. I mean, how hard can it be to accept an empty seat at movie night? 'I don’t think that would be appropriate, ensign.'” She mimicked his British accent perfectly, but ended on a barked laugh that only partly disguised the hurt behind it.

The young ambassadorial aide didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for her friend, who was still straddling the torture machine. Hoshi was looking quite frustrated.

“Yet I bet you made the move on Goldie because he reminds you of him, even if it’s only the accent,” Zoe argued and sat down on a chair next to her naked friend. But Hoshi only snorted sarcastically.

“He’s everything that Malcolm isn't. If I gave _him_ such a clear view of the naughty bits, Malcolm would run screaming. And while the dashing security chief couldn't make up his mind for four full years, Goldie simply scribbled his comms code on my butt.”

Zoe doubled over, laughing hysterically. “He did _what?_ That's hilarious!”

She watched in amusement as Hoshi shifted her posture and pointed to a fading number on her buttock.

“So did you contact him?”

“Not yet,” she heard Hoshi say. “I'll have him checked out by a friend next Tuesday.”

“He looked like a nice guy,” Zoe argued. “Why do you need to check him out?”

“I've met a 'nice guy' in the Expanse and he held me hostage,” Hoshi returned. “Trip met a 'nice girl' and she had him stick his fingers in a bowl of rocks. It turned out that she had basically raped him and he ended up pregnant. T'Pol met a Vulcan and he mind-raped her. We've all learned the hard way not to trust first impressions.”

Zoe didn't know any answer to that. She just looked at Hoshi in shock.

=/\=

A low guttural moan told Trip that she had finally found the courage to let go of her emotional discipline. The first minutes of their 'second first time' had been an exercise in futility as T'Pol was unable to prevent herself from clamping down on her emotions again and again. But it seemed that his stubborn persistence, his continued whispered encouragements, had finally convinced her to take the tumble and she had quickly been lost in the sea of unfamiliar sensations.

She hissed something in Vulcan that didn't quite sound like 'that's so good' and he wondered if it was aforementioned 'udder remark' as he twirled his tongue around her right nipple. Considering that all his efforts during the night in the Expanse had not made them this erect and hard, he knew that this time things were different and if the sound track was anything to go by, T'Pol would definitely 'feel something' this time.

It felt extremely weird commenting – for the recording – what he was currently doing, but he had not forgotten the scientific aspect of their first proper ‘roll in the hay’. If Hoshi was to make sense of T'Pol's surprisingly wide repertoire of groaning, hissing, squealing and other noises, it would help if she could match the feedback to his actions. It might not be a Shakespearean level of communication, but it was a vocal communication all the same and that was Hoshi's area of expertise.

“Going for the sweet spot now, with the tongue. Keeping hands on breasts,” he commented and slowly licked along her abdomen, while continuing to knead her ample breasts gently. Since Vulcans apparently did not grow pubic hair, his tongue didn't need to do much searching before establishing that the basic erogenous anatomy of Vulcan females was almost the same as that of humans.

He was hit on the head by her heel as T'Pol lifted and spread her legs hastily, holding them up with her hands. Shaking off the momentary confusion, he continued his work. “Somebody's been waiting for that,” he commented with a chuckle. Since her clitoris, or whatever the Vulcan equivalent was named, was actually inside her tight opening, he had to snake his tongue into her, but once he had managed to do so, T'Pol went off her rocker.

She was wailing in ecstasy as the tip of his tongue caressed the small nub inside her, and although he didn't understand a word of it, at a guess she was cussing a blue-streak that would no doubt make Hoshi blush bright red when she listened to the recording. That said, he could blush some himself when he even thought about a third party hearing this, even Hoshi whom he trusted more than pretty much anyone else he knew.

Her legs snapped back together, trapping his head forcefully and her whole body began to spasm. With a blood-curdling scream T'Pol climaxed violently as Trip struggled to keep getting air while he continued with the stimulation. Thankfully, before she could rob him off his consciousness, her body went limp and he could free himself from the stranglehold. He gathered the trembling Vulcan in his arms as she recovered from a massive climax.

He felt her hands start to explore his face, and since she was not reacting to any words, he saw his theory proven that she was currently unable to see or hear a thing. Her sense of smell seemed to be unimpaired though as she started to sniff along his torso, roaming it with her searching hands. Once she had found his rock-hard erection, she quickly gulped down on his tool and her head started bobbing up and down with verve.

Trip was gripped by a moment of panic, and just to be sure he grabbed the hypospray as he wasn't keen on finding out how strong a Vulcan bite was. But despite her semi-coherent state T'Pol pleasured him with an exquisite technique; whatever she’d been reading up on, she’d sure taken it on board. His head fell back into the cushion as he got lost in the immense mix of sensations. It didn't take her long to bring him to the boiling point. His hard organ throbbed, engulfed by her soft mouth, and with an ecstatic groan he unloaded inside her throat. To his surprise she gulped down everything and even licked him clean before releasing his softening meat from the gentle hold between her lips.

He gathered her back into his arms after she had sniffed and felt her way back up his torso. As her head came to rest on his chest her body went limp, and she fell into a deep sleep almost immediately.

=/\=

Hoshi sat back, re-reading the latest chapter of her translation. She wondered how T'Pol would take to the revelations of the Kir'Shara, which in essence declared that the militant suppression of emotions was the wrong way. Granted, the term of 'mastering thine emotions' was sufficiently vague to be open to debate, but the gist was clear that there were situations when one had to work not _against_ them, but _with_ them.

Instinctively suppressing fear was a practical thing, but it made one prone to overlook the reasons that had caused it – danger.

=/\=

Former administrator V'Las looked back and groaned in frustration as his pursuer was still there. He did not quite know why this woman – T'Pau – had decided to leave the task of finding him to the _terrhassu,_ a species that was ill-equipped to deal with the hardships of the Forge. He was, however, developing doubts if this human was really ill-equipped. After all, even his sand-colored hair seemed to be an adaption to camouflage in the desert. His sand-colored suit and the pale color of his skin made the outline of his body blend in with the endless waste of sand.

Having been abandoned by his _rihanssu_ contact he was left to fend for himself, and he rued the years of inactivity in the High Command as his stamina and strength seemed to have diminished greatly. How else would a frail human keep up with him?

He continued running along the path, but by the looks of it the Terran did not even need to exert himself unduly. He was casually matching his pace, even drinking water on the move. It was as if he demonstratively tried to keep up an appearance of not being challenged. Unlike his pursuer, he did not have any water provisions and V'Las knew that the next well was at least another five hours away.

Would the human kill him while drinking? He did not know how to assess the situation. If the male tracking him was really as untaxed by the exertion as he made it seem, he could easily have caught him by now. A horrible thought came to his mind – the Terran did not want to kill him. He wanted to chase him into death by exhaustion – and he was succeeding.

=/\=

A pang of panic gripped T'Pol as she woke up from a deep slumber – the left side of the bed was empty. Had the encounter been unsatisfactory again? For herself she could most certainly answer that question with an emphatic NO. Even after several hours of sleep, and now firmly back in control of her emotions, her mind simmered with contentment.

Looking at the window, she saw that it was dark outside, so she had slept at least eight hours, which was unusual in itself. She slowly got up and made her way to the bathroom.

=/\=

Trip was seated at her desk, doing calculations on how they could reprogram a re-sequencer to produce jet fuel instead of milk or coffee. Considering the amount of fuel they would need, a single device would need a full twenty hours to produce it, not to mention that the sewage system would be really clean afterwards.

He felt two hands on his shoulder and when he looked up, his view of T'Pol's face was obstructed by her breasts.

“Now that's some view,” he said with a grin. “Slept well darlin'?”

“I did sleep exceptionally well, beloved. As for my state of undress, I begin to understand Hoshi's preference for it. However, _I_ strictly limit my audience to one.”

“Won't be gettin’ any complaint from me,” he said elatedly, moved the chair and motioned her to sit on his lap.

Once she had sat down, he slipped his arms around her torso to steady her.

“So what does the scientist say? Was our experiment a success?”

“As far as I could review the data so far, it was most successful. I would however recommend repeating it numerous times to make sure that the findings are statistically representative.”

Her face was solemn, but her eyes definitely had a twinkle in them.

Trip laughed. She was getting really good at doing her 'teasing voice', and while both of them had always enjoyed a good banter, teasing each other this way was even more fun. He did go a bit more serious as – jokes aside – he wanted to make sure that she had enjoyed it.

“Well, from the look of things, I'd say you really enjoyed it, but we've already established that indirect communication doesn't really work between us. So I'll need a clear statement.”

“Even though my memories are incomplete due to the partial loss of coherence, I have never felt contentment to such degree before,” she admitted and kissed him. “I do not, however, know how much satisfaction you would have had from such an encounter other than inspecting my unclothed physique.”

Trip chuckled lightly.

“Then your memories must be really sketchy. You seem to be unaware that you nearly made _me_ incoherent, too. Just tell me it wasn't your mother, who taught you to ...um... 'apply the oral technique'.”

He smiled when he saw the very elevated eyebrow on her face. Quickly consulting his mental 'eyebrow reference sheet' he decided that it was a mixture of amusement and surprise.

“I applied the oral technique?”

“Most masterfully I might add,” he said with an honest smile. “Where did you learn that? I would have thought that something like that isn't exactly in the Vulcan text book.”

A slight greenish tinge crept up her cheeks.

“It is a technique Hoshi has taught me. I was not sure I would remember it in my state.”

“Oh you remembered all right,” he beamed enthusiastically. “Leave it to Hoshi to teach you something like that.”

“She has a variety of synthetic phallic...”

Her explanation was cut short, when he put his finger over her lips.

“Darlin', that's a detail Hoshi does _not_ want me to have,” he said, smiling at her.

“As I have recently learned, however, the technique seemed to be known to our Vulcan ancestors.”

A red flag popped up in his mind.

“Hold it, darlin',” he said and waited until he had her full attention. “I don't know what you learned about your ancestors, but I know you. What happens between the sheets is a matter between you and me only. And the key is that we both are comfortable with whatever we do. It doesn't count what Hoshi demonstrates or what your ancestors knew or didn't know. When the two of us get intimate there is only one rule – both of us have to enjoy it, okay?”

She looked at him in confusion, but he held her gaze.

“Is it not the purpose of an intimate encounter to elicit as much pleasure in one’s partner as possible?”

“True, darlin', but human intimacy isn't Vulcan blood-fever. I won't die if you don't do whatever I fancy at the time and I already told you, if I can see that you don't enjoy it, I can't enjoy it either.”

“I will keep that in mind,” she promised. “At least when it is working properly.”

He chuckled and pointed at his calculations.

“Can you have a quick look, darlin'? I think I've got the calculations right, but you'll spot a mistake much faster than I do.”

He sat back while T'Pol bent over him to look at his work. He enjoyed the glorious view while she checked his calculations.

=/\=

Hoshi coughed, reminding herself that it was about time to leave the ancient caves. More caves, easily accessible from the one she had inspected with T'Pol, described more parts of the history of T'Pol's people and her clan seemed to be almost always in the thick of it.

In a way it was good that she had come alone this time as T'Pol would probably not be too keen on learning about some parts of her clan's history. The stories in the first cave, about three thousand years old, had shown ritual orgies among clan members. Her friend didn't really need to know that almost a thousand years later the very same celebrations were gang-rapes of the abducted females of the clans that had been vanquished in battle. Sickeningly the barbarian adage _'if I fit in, she's old enough'_ seemed to have been a grim reality at the time.

The only thing that made the knowledge bearable was the fact that T'Pol's clan was the one who brought about change through Surak and his first disciples, who had all come from the clan _Sh'hiran'lin'iijyliunh'rei'iy'iukn'hy'wen'lhia'ehrm'n._ She didn't know if Vulcans engaged in genealogy, but considering the similarity of Names like T'Pal, T'Mar, T'Las, T'Pen to recent members of T'Pol's family, it stood to reason that she could be a member of the house of T'Klaas, one of the first followers of Surak and the first _kohlinar_ master.

While she walked up the stairs towards the surface she thought that it would just be fitting that T'Pol as a member of Surak's clan would be instrumental in bringing another wave of change to her world. Not only in the fact that she helped save the _Kir'Shara_ and therefore correct the corruptions of Surak's original teachings, but also by being the first Vulcan to openly live with a human - or any alien, in fact.

Since Vulcans in Surak's time had only primitive ion-drive based space technology they had not made contact with other races, so there was no Surakian wisdom to rely on in her quest to find a path in life with Trip. She was – in the figurative sense – writing the rule book on interspecies relationships.

As Hoshi walked out into the open air again, she tugged at her sweat-soaked uniform, looking forward to getting rid of it upon return to her guest quarters in the human compound.

=/\=

Trip sat down heavily in the chair in Professor Solan's office. The fact that it provided all the comfort of a slab of concrete was irrelevant after a six hour lecture on aerodynamics before a group of Vulcan engineers, who took curiosity to a new level.

“When you warned me about your engineers being 'inquisitive', you weren't kidding,” he said, exhausted by standing for hours under the influence of Vulcan's higher gravity.

“It is a necessary trait for a successful scientist, but not one that is widely appreciated among the wider population,” his host explained.

“That's an understatement. You wouldn't believe how much flak T'Pol has taken over the years. But one thing just doesn't add up. Why did Vulcans never wonder why birds fly? I understand you were a warrior race. Airborne travel would have been a huge advantage.”

“There are no birds large enough to carry an adult warrior, except for _Lan'kagars,_ but those creatures consider us a rather desirable part of their diet. In wartime one concentrates his resources on finding new ways to kill each other. By the Time of Awakening, we had already developed fusion and ion drive, which did not require knowledge of aerodynamics.”

“Figures,” Trip acknowledged, taking another drink from the professor. “Now with the theoretical basics out of the way, I think we can start buildin’ the thing. I take it enough of your people know how to use a welding torch?”

“Are you sure we can finish the project in the time of your visit?”

“Easily,” Trip said with conviction. “With today's technology, we should easily manage to build it in ten days. In fact in that time we'll easily manage to build two. I'd like to take one of them back to Earth.”

“Is there any other support you will require?”

“There's one thing,” the engineer answered, taking out a PADD. “I hope you have a good tailor's shop around here, which can produce some of these?”

“Considering the size it does not look like a garment.” The professor stated the obvious.

“It's called a parachute. It's opened during the free fall and through aerodynamic drag it decelerates the fall to a speed that allows a safe landing.”

“A safety device?”

“In most cases yes,” the engineer confirmed. “Another use was deployment of troops. You could fly over a war zone at a relatively safe height and troops just jumped out and landed by parachute. That way you didn't need any infrastructure as you didn't need to land in the first place. It was also done just for fun.”

“Your people jumped from great heights as a recreational activity?”

“Sure. Biggest jump ever happened in twenty-twelve – a guy called Baumgartner jumped from a height of thirty-nine kilometers, spent over four minutes in free fall, exceeding the speed of sound before the 'chutes were deployed and he landed safely in a field.”

“Most peculiar.”

“Nah, just humanity at its craziest,” Trip returned with a wide grin.

=/\=

Her naked body was soaked in sweat and her breath was labored, trying to meet the heightened need for oxygen in Vulcan's thin atmosphere. Hoshi didn't care about either condition as her right hand vigorously pushed the buzzing vibrator deep into her opening again and again in search of relief. Lying on her back with her legs spread wide, she pinched her nipple with the left hand, while the right one continued to pound her heated flesh with the synthetic device.

She whimpered in lust and her hips started to buck as she slowly built up towards climax before her squeals gave way to a low grunting as the climax rocked her petite frame.

If she was thinking of anyone in particular riding her like a rodeo horse, she wasn’t going to let even herself in on the secret.

=/\=

Hoshi was still lying on her back spread-eagled, wheezing from the exertion of masturbating herself to a glorious orgasm. When she had agreed to T'Pol's request to give the audio recording of Trip and T'Pol's tryst the linguistic once-over she had assumed that she might end up fanning herself, but the wild sounds had left her so horny that she had to get it out of her system with the help of 'Mr. Bombastic', her trusty seven-inch vibrator.

One thing was for sure, Vulcans certainly weren't hopeless romantics, with or without emotional control, unless one felt 'encouraged' by the words 'lick my burning flesh harder, dirty animal'. Programming something useful into the universal translator with T'Pol's crude swearing as a base would certainly be a challenge. But Hoshi relished a challenge, even though – or perhaps especially when – it made her so hot that she had to empty Mr. Bombastic's batteries.

T'Pol's ripe language was not what had made her so horny, but Trip's cool comments. Not only did it show that there was a man putting his mind to one goal only – making his partner feel more than good. The sheer variety of nibbling, kissing, licking and caressing he had performed had her imagination play a veritable porn flick in her mind with herself and Mr. Right, whom she was hoping to meet one day, in the main roles.

Hoshi got up, and on still wobbly knees she staggered towards the shower.

Damn Zoe. Making her remember Mr. Wrong, who wouldn’t know a good thing if it was waggled in his face without a stitch on…

Heck. A guy as uptight as Malcolm Reed probably couldn’t get it up anyway.

=/\=

He sat on the crest of the dune watching how a sehlat gorged on the innards of the Vulcan. He doubted the petite female, who had performed the thoroughly enjoyable lap dance for him two days ago, would still be as enthusiastic to please him if she saw the barbarity he presided over. But then he had just done the job they had asked of him. He had eliminated the former head of the High Command without actually killing him himself. Several injections of Tri-Ox had enabled him to chase the bugger into the path of some really hungry wildlife. After all there were no doping controls in the Forge.

He would certainly pay for the exertion over the next days, but he had all the time in the world to recover. Five days until Tuesday, when the most fascinating and gorgeous creature in the galaxy would be on stage again. He would have been disappointed had she just called him using the comms code on her bum as it would mean that there was someone seeing her naked. It was the most sophisticated method he could think of to check whether she was unattached.

Five days from now it was time to make his intentions known. He could hardly wait seeing her beautiful dance again. That she was undressing while at it was a welcome icing on the cake.


	4. Wardrobe Malfunction

T'Pol walked into the spacious office of the new head of the High Council. Normally she would not even think about troubling the planet's highest representative with personal matters, but the young new leader had not only been a close acquaintance of her mother, she had also seen her mind during the healing meld she had performed while carrying the Kir'Shara through the desert. There was none other she could ask in her attempt to find out what had happened to her mind.

“Have a seat, T'Pol,” her host offered and T'Pol sat down into one of the chairs around a small table. A young aide served refreshments.

“I was informed you wished to consult me on a personal matter?” T'Pau asked once her aide had left, and T'Pol could hear in the voice of the young female that there was a certain amount of curiosity involved in her inquiry.

“I have been experiencing... premonitions and what feels like intrusions of foreign emotions.”

“I suspect the 'premonitions' concern your mate, Commander Tucker?”

“How do you know?” T'Pol asked, shocked by the revelation that the other woman knew her intimate secret.

“Your mother and I spoke a great deal. She was unable to forgive herself for her part in forcing you into marriage to Koss.”

The soft tone in T'Pau's voice startled her. The successor of V'Las was exceedingly young, but T'Pol had only known her as a female with an iron resolve. She continued to listen to her host's explanation.

“She discovered his affection for you when she accidentally touched him while helping him don your father's robe. T'Les insisted that she had never experienced such passion – not even in her own mate. And since I have seen your mind – and your past – I knew that it was inevitable that you would come to your senses and give up your denial of your affection for him once this illicit marriage was annulled, for otherwise your katra would have been poisoned. You were perilously close to it in any case.”

“Why have I not sensed my mother’s thoughts when I carried her katra in my mind?” T'Pol asked.

“Your talent for denial is strong, T'Pol. It was easy for T'Les' katra to use that facet of your personality to hide the thoughts she did not want you to see. As for your 'premonitions' – I believe what you experience are the early stages of a _tel_ – the mating bond. I am, however, surprised that a human is receptive to telepathy. Perhaps you can describe such an experience?”

T'Pol closed her eyes and began applying a breathing technique as she had done during the visit to the caves with Hoshi.

=/\=

Trip had just been putting the finishing touches on the attitude indicator when he was suddenly drawn into that darn white space again. Just like before, he looked into the surprised eyes of T'Pol. This time, however, he was going to test how real these weird daydreams were. He grabbed her by the buttocks and planted a kiss on her mouth. Their lips had barely touched, however, when – much to his confusion and disappointment – the white space vanished, along with T'Pol.

Coming to his senses, he hurriedly removed the device from his lips, looking around in considerable embarrassment to find out if someone had seen him kiss a piece of metal. Thankfully all the Vulcans were busy putting the finishing touches on the upper left wing. It was a good thing he hadn't been talking to one of them when the daydream started...

That would definitely have been _one_ way to get himself talked about.

=/\=

T'Pau saw that T'Pol was not entirely coherent, or at least heavily distracted. Her guest had entered a shallow meditation technique and come out of it with a pronouncedly flushed face – obviously aroused.

“He touched... my posterior and... he kissed me,” T'Pol said and T'Pau gave her a moment to regain her composure. She had not expected the disclosure of such intimate details.

“Has there been any history of that happening before?”

She saw T'Pol's uneasy nod and wondered if her visitor referred to the intimate touch or fleeting meetings inside mind. In any case it mattered not. The symptoms of a nascent tel were irrefutable.

“Then it is true – you and Commander Tucker are bonded.”

The young Vulcan left deliberately unsaid how unspeakably rare it was for a tel to form without the help of a bonding meld. She was convinced that many Vulcans were not prepared to accept that such a rare event had taken place between a Vulcan and a human.

=/\=

Hoshi wiped the sweat from her forehead. The heat was unbearable as she made notes about the last cave. It was the history of the Time of Awakening. Apparently a group of Vulcans, led by a fellow named S'Task, who did not accept the teachings of Surak, had boarded a generational ship and buggered off into space.

Fed up with the sweat soaked uniform clinging to her skin, she zipped it open and shrugged off the upper half of it. She tied the arms around her waist and continued her work. She had to get the job done within the next twenty minutes, as breathing was hard enough on Vulcan without the added challenge of air that hadn't been refreshed since the middle ages.

There was a nagging thought in her mind that the writing – should she indeed have deciphered it properly – sounded eerily close to what she had heard when they had run into the Romulan minefield. Could it be that the Romulans were the selfsame people who had left Vulcan in disagreement over Surak's teachings, or were in some way related to them?

=/\=

Trip inspected his work with no little amount of satisfaction. The dashboard of his plane was complete with a myriad of dials, knobs and levers. Pushing the yet unconnected power lever forward he augmented his fantasy by making appropriate noises in his mind. Shaking off the momentary flight of fancy, he started pulling some of the cables, checking that the appropriate controls were moving in response.

A noise from the background alerted him to the arrival of a visitor and his face split into a grin when Hoshi climbed into the half-finished fuselage.

“Hi Hoshi.”

She peered around admiringly. “Hi. Have you built all this in just two days?”

“Sure. We even have a seat for cute lady visitors,” he said and pointed to the co-pilot's seat.

“You've been together now for what - three days - and you already chat up other girls?” she needled him.

“I don't think I could compete with someone who manages to scribble his comms code on your butt without you noticing. And you never did a lapdance for me, so I know my place,” he returned the barb with a grin, enjoying her slight blush.

“For you I would have, you know, back in the day,” she said and Trip knew she referred to the lapdance.

“But I wouldn't have watched, Hoshi,” he said seriously. “We all loved your little routine, but believe it or not; some of us were much more fascinated by _where_ you could put your legs instead of what was _between_ them. That standin’ split on the pole actually looked better with the panties on than without them.”

“Yeah, that wasn't a very modest pose, was it?” she agreed with a chuckle.

“I think T'Pol still hasn't gotten her head around the fact that you actually really like doin’ that, and as much as I want to help you out with your mysterious admirer, I'm not sure we should really be there next Tuesday. After all we've been through until T'Pol finally admitted I'm more than an experiment, I don't really want to hurt her or make her insecure.”

He could see Hoshi's slightly sad look. Although she was rightly careful about her unknown admirer's intentions, he could also see that she probably wished that he was genuine and she’d banked her hope on him to find out.

“Hoshi, considerin’ that you refused pretty much every overture from even the most popular guys back in the day, how come you're suddenly goin’ all gaga over a guy you never met before? Are you sure it wasn't the drink? I mean strippin’ is one thing, but you would never have done a lapdance back then, let alone one that enabled someone to give your butt an autograph. You must have gone pretty wild.”

He could see her blush deepen.

“Trip, I just feel that he's the right one. I mean, yeah, I wasn't really sober, and if he had started to grope me, I’m sure the night would have ended with him in my bed. After all it's been ages since I... you know. But he was the perfect gentleman and he smiled at me. Have you ever seen Malcolm smile?”

“Actually, yes, but we were stranded in a shuttlepod and pissed out of our skulls,” Trip replied with a chuckle. He decided to leave the detail unmentioned that Malcolm was also commenting on the finer points of T'Pol's butt at the time.

“I've waited so long for him to make a move and suddenly I meet this guy who is all that's great in Malcolm without the stick up his ass. I had the exact feeling I had when I saw Malcolm the first time – the same butterflies.”

“But he's only a surrogate, hon,” he said and took her hand. “You still compare him to Mal.”

“I'm not you, Trip. God knows where you took the strength from to take so many rejections from T'Pol and still come back for more. I just can't. I've heard ' _That wouldn't be appropriate, Ensign_ ' one time too often.”

“So you think I'm a doormat,” he said, slightly offended by the unspoken implication.

She sighed.

“If I’m honest? Yeah. Until yesterday, I did,” she admitted, her glance cast downwards in embarrassment. “That was before I heard the recording. T'Pol has no idea what a great catch she almost let slip through her fingers. You must really love her to go through with a weird experiment like that for her sake. I'm not inhibited by anyone's standards, but that took some guts.”

“Let's say it was one of the more bizarre encounters I've had. But don't sell yourself short, Hoshi. The very fact that you still think about Malcolm is proof enough that you haven't really given up on him. Are you sure that _you_ aren’t lettin’ a great catch slip through your fingers?”

“What am I supposed to do Trip, wait another four years?”

“I wish I could answer that,” Trip sighed. “It’s your life of course and if T’Pol’s okay with it I’ll help you out with your mystery man. But I also feel bad for Malcolm.”

An acutely observant man, he knew that the Brit wasn’t half as uninterested in Hoshi as he made out to be. He also knew that under that stiff and reticent exterior was a lonely man who found relationships difficult – as had been made clear in Shuttlepod One during what they’d both thought were their final hours. He didn’t know – but suspected – that once the hard shell was cracked, a passionate lover lurked inside. However, none of this was something it would be fair to Malcolm to make public knowledge, even to Hoshi. The Englishman had to make his own moves. Or not make them, if that was what he chose.

“He had enough time, didn’t he?”

Trip could hear the finality in her words – Hoshi really was prepared to let go of her hope as far as Mal was concerned. And his stuffy British friend didn’t even have a chance at a last-minute reprieve, because he was back home on Earth, probably overseeing repairs in that very minute.

But there was nothing he could or even should do. It was Hoshi’s life and in a way she was right. Malcolm could at least have accepted the seat next to her at movie night. Being a stickler for the rules was one thing and an honorable one at that, but he was afraid that Malcolm would soon regret his professional conduct.

But it was an easy thing to say for someone who wouldn’t be busted for fraternization, because the ‘relationship’ with T’Pol had technically begun before she was commissioned in Starfleet. Malcolm didn’t have that loop hole and couldn’t jump over his own shadow to break regulations. That rigid adherence to the rules was part of his make-up, part of what defined him; part of what he’d probably call his honor. Life definitely wasn’t fair for all.

=/\=

T'Pol closed her eyes and quickly applied the necessary mental techniques to free her mind from the arousal that had built up by listening to the recording. No wonder that Hoshi had been so aroused she had to 'help herself', the Vulcan thought. After all, she had almost reached the same predicament moments ago.

Quickly she wiped the body fluids off her hand that had covered it due to the vigorous stimulation of her private parts.She was satisfied that she could, even after letting go of her control, regain it as long as she had not yet lost her senses of hearing and vision. This would make intimate encounters less risky after their return to the ship. Up to a certain point of arousal they would be able to interrupt a sexual encounter in case of an alarm or other events. However, the simmering arousal inside her mind was hard to suppress. It would be easy to just finish the 'autonomous routine' for now, but she challenged herself to try and fight the arousal into suppression. There would be a chance to release it in the night.

She stood and collected the towel with which she had safeguarded the bed sheets against staining. It was time for a shower and final preparations for the return of her mate.

=/\=

Trip looked down uneasily. For no apparent reason, he had suddenly developed a painfully hard erection only for the 'little engineer' to go limp again. Ailerons weren't really sexy enough to cause such a reaction, and neither were mental calculations of possible stall speeds in relation to Vulcan's thin atmosphere.

Thank god he was in the shower at the time. An eight inch boner wasn't the most inconspicuous sight, even under a uniform, and certainly it would be an excruciatingly embarrassing one in a meeting with people who found the thought of holding hands in public was scandalous. This was the second time he had this weird sensation of feeling something that didn't quite belong to his mind. And then there was that weird daydream in the mornin...

He looked up at the Vulcan 'shower'. Sure these sonic showers left him cleaner than an hour in decon, but standing under a shower and not getting wet was not only weird, it was thoroughly unsatisfactory. Leave it to the Vulcans to make one of the most pleasurable activities thoroughly dull, he thought grumpily.

Thankfully T'Pol was not clinging to the Vulcan ways in _all_ aspects of their private life.

=/\=

She adjusted the blouse so that the hems of the half-opened garment ran diagonally across her breasts. Carefully she made minuscule adjustments, so that her nipples were covered, but a tiny fraction of her dark bronze colored areolae were showing on either side, along with 'a cleavage that will knock him out' as Hoshi had described it. To facilitate this look they had procured a brassiere that only lifted the underside of her breasts leaving them otherwise uncovered.

Normally such a garment would not be necessary as Vulcan mammary tissue was less prone to loss of elasticity than human one, but to push them into the right position and shape, the support was needed for once. The short strip of lace visible just above the point where the blouse's hems met to form a large V shaped opening, added an aesthetically pleasing touch to the ensemble.

Her long legs were covered in long white lace stockings, that were fastened to a supporting garment called 'a suspender belt', which was tied around her waist. Her attire was completed by panties that matched the color of her brassiere, and an extremely short and almost uncomfortably tight skirt. Hoshi had amused herself by 'trying to find out if that was actually a skirt or a belt'. Unfortunately she herself had had more than ample time to make such observations as it had taken considerable time to practice walking in the newly acquired high-heeled shoes without suffering any ankle injuries.

She checked her appearance in the mirror one last time, evaluating if all the fine details of her body's shape were sufficiently emphasized, especially the posterior and the concave curvature of her waist, which her beloved found so attractive. As the bust was the main focus of today's encounter, this part of her physique had of course received extra emphasis.

Hoshi had a habit of concentrating on certain body regions when visiting the gym. The young linguist had suggested doing so during their 'scientific sex', too and T'Pol had decided that today would be 'bust day'. For a human, Hoshi's logic was surprisingly sound. Concentrating on her mammary features would most likely yield a wider variety of utterances pertaining to that specific part of her body, and Hoshi had expressed her hope that 'there will be some I can translate without making it sound like a porn flick'.

Why she had, on the other hand, suggested clothing that she described as 'a tad slutty', was the young linguist's undisclosed secret. Most likely it was to have a particularly extreme effect on him, and the nervous Vulcan found herself actually looking forward to seeing him possibly even stunned into silence. Satisfied with the apparel, T'Pol reached for the wig she had once worn during their visit to the Akaali planet. She knew that her mate had a wish for her hair to be longer and 'less Vulcan', and reasoning that she was 'pulling out all the stops' with the clothing anyway, she could as well test his reaction to a different hairdo.

=/\=

When he had crossed the last dune and walked down the sandy hill, finally leaving the Vulcan Forge behind, he could see that his 'employer' had indeed kept his word and was waiting for him in an unmarked shuttlepod of Vulcan origin. Prepared to mount a defense, should the ensemble prove to be a trap, he carefully entered the craft.

“I take it there were no complications?” his employer asked. What the point was of wearing a leather jacket on Vulcan was not readily apparent, but then the bloke probably didn't even take it off when mounting his old lady.

“We encountered a rather hungry _sehlat_ and he gladly donated his organs,” he reported dryly, running his hand through his blond hair. Remnants of sand trickled out of it onto the clean floor, but he couldn't really give a flying toss if the cleaning lady would have to work five minutes longer.

He opened one of the nearby freestanding containers and took out one of the refreshments. After three days in the desert it was good to replenish lost minerals. He would need to nurture his exhausted bulk back to full health lest he’d be looking like a wash-out when he would hopefully meet the gorgeous lady again.

=/\=

Trip walked out of the small office that the Vulcan Science Academy had assigned to him. With a last long look he checked the progress on their building project. After just three days the fuselage and one set of wings were finished, and since the Vulcans could easily work twenty hours without tiring, he was sure that by the morning the double-decker wings on the opposite side would be attached too.

He checked that his fresh uniform was sitting correctly and walked out of the building towards the launch platform, where Hoshi had parked the shuttlepod during the day after returning from another trip to Mount Seleya. Looking forward to another night helping T'Pol in her 'scientific endeavor' he started up the craft and started speculating on what she would have thought up this time.

=/\=

T'Pol wondered if she should allow herself to relax her discipline prematurely, just to laugh at her mate's completely dumbfounded look. If she was to ask him his name right now, she wasn't sure he would be able to remember it. He was standing in the doorway, steadying himself with his arm while taking off his shoes. He had frozen in the middle of the action and was now staring at her in disbelief.

His dilated pupils and the unmistakable smell of pheromones in the air told her that even though she was – technically – fully clothed, her appearance aroused him greatly; that fact gave her a singularly un-Vulcan (and rather base) satisfaction. Feeling so strongly desired by her mate was an exhilarating sensation.

“Do you need help divesting yourself of your footwear, beloved?” she inquired innocently.

“I need help breathin' darlin',” he answered, his voice an octave higher than usual. Slowly he continued removing his shoes, but never took his eyes off her.

She indicated that he should sit down at the table, where dinner was served. She had spent the best part of the afternoon preparing food with Hoshi. For obvious reasons the young human could not stay for dinner, but she had taken a copious amount of the food with her in isolation containers to share it with her friends in the compound.

“Before we engage in sexual,” she quickly caught herself, “before we ‘make love', ashayam, it is prudent that we eat. If you are agreeable to it, I would like to propose that we concentrate on my bust today.”

“Trust me, gorgeous, I _am_ concentrating on your bust...” he muttered absentmindedly. Certainly his gaze was riveted in that direction in an agreeably flattering manner.

Following his glance she looked down and saw that the left side of her blouse had shifted slightly, fully exposing her nipple. Raising an amused eyebrow, she readjusted the garment.

“Later, beloved.” She needed him to exercise a little more patience than usual. “While we eat, we need to discuss something.”

“And I'm supposed to concentrate?” he asked, for the first time looking into her face for an extended period of time.

“Did you have any unusual periods or any unusual emotional experiences lately?” she asked, ignoring his attempt at humor.

“I suppose you mean the daydreams?”

She nodded, both in affirmation of his answer, but also in satisfaction about the fact that – despite the visual distraction – her beloved did indeed pay full attention to what she had to say.

“What you describe as 'daydreams' are early manifestations of a tel – the Vulcan mating bond.”

He considered this statement.

“Since it has a name, I suppose that's a normal thing among Vulcans?”

T'Pol looked at him for a minute. She had expected that he would be worried or perhaps even angry that she 'had done' something to him that he wasn't prepared for, but it appeared that Hoshi had been right when she said that Trip would accept their relationship no matter what changes it brought to his life.

“A tel is indeed 'a normal thing' between Vulcan mates. Ours, however, is unusual, because for a bond to form normally a bonding meld has to be performed by a priest. Our bond has formed on its own. According to parts of the Kir'Shara that Ensign Sato has already translated, it is a rare but most desirable event. We each seem to have found our true ashayam – our true soul mate.”

“You say the sweetest things when your boobs have fallen out of the blouse darlin'.”

She saw his absentminded look, but she knew that it was pretended. He was indeed concentrating fully on her information, but feigned distraction as part of a game and waited how she would react to the repeated misalignment of her clothing. Unwilling to readjust the uncooperative garment again, and even more unwilling to deny him the visual stimulus he seemed to appreciate greatly, she simply left it uncorrected and raised a long-suffering eyebrow.

It was not necessarily common practice to have one's breasts exposed during the meal and it made her understand what Hoshi had meant by describing the apparel as 'a tad slutty', but she reasoned that bringing positive emotions to her beloved was a worthy enough cause to endure the indignity of a malfunctioning garment. It was not meant to be worn much longer than the meal was expected to last anyway.

“What does this tel mean for us, other than the fact that I have rather entertaining daydreams?” he asked, having apparently sated his desire to appreciate her half-exposed mammary features visually – for now at least.

“We will experience more of these 'daydreams' while the bond strengthens with time. However, the stronger the bond grows, the rarer these spontaneous connections will become.”

“That's the reason for that living together for a year thing, innit?” he asked with an unmistakably mischievous glint in his eyes. “So that you if you were for instance married to a dashing engineer, he won't stick his hand into a live plasma stream while thinking he's kissing his wife.”

T'Pol didn't answer. Instead she raised an amused eyebrow waiting for 'the minor currency unit to drop'. On an unknown impulse, she also opened her top garment slightly as she felt a strange sensation of a raising temperature. A fleeting thought of her mate's mind as a mechanical device came to her, with the appropriate noises connected with its currently frantic activity.

“This... tel... It's like marryin' isn't it?” he asked slowly as if he was prepared not to believe the answer anyway, staring mesmerized at her now completely exposed breasts.

“Yes, beloved. We would need to undergo a witnessing meld to make it official, but according to the recovered true teachings of Surak, we are considered husband and wife since the moment our bond formed. That is, if you are agreeable to the idea?”

T'Pol felt a moment of confusion, when his smile faded and he did not immediately answer. He slowly stood up and started opening her blouse. She stood up to make it easier for him. Soon the sheer garment floated to the ground and her breasts bounced into their normal shape when the minimalistic brassiere was removed.

“I don't think I'm hungry anymore,” he said very calmly while zipping open her skirt. With the nimble fingers of an engineer he hooked into the waistband of her panties and pushed them down. She slipped her feet out of the uncomfortable foot gear and raised an eyebrow when he made no move to remove the belt or the stockings, which were the only pieces of clothing left.

“Those stay on,” he decreed. “You have no idea how ridiculously hot you look stark naked in a suspender belt.”

“Trip? Is everything alright?”

“No,” he replied, causing her a moment of panic, but it vanished as she heard the rest of his explanation. “I have not yet had time to demonstrate to my WIFE just how agreeable I find that idea.”

As he released his joy in a loud whoop, she let him carry her to the bedroom.

  
  


 


	5. Sleeping Arrangements

_A/N: A little challenge for the shipping crowd: Find the hidden reference to Hopeful Romantic's fantastic 'Reconnecting' Series_

She could barely believe her eyes and laughed. "You go girl! That's a 'fuck me silly' look if I ever saw one!" Hoshi cried out in triumph. On the screen before her was a picture of T'Pol, posed on her hands and knees on top of the bed, stark naked except for the suspender belt and the stockings, looking into the camera with a passion in her eyes that threatened to reduce the screen to a molten pile of plastic.

She was pretty sure that Trip had not meant to send one of the nude pictures he had apparently snapped of T'Pol the night before. The similar names of the image file and the recording he'd had sent looked like he had accidentally selected two files at once when adding the attachment to the message. Well, if T'Pol had looked at him like  _that_  not too long before, it was a minor miracle that he had been able to assemble a message at all without short-circuiting the keyboard by drooling all over it.

She deleted the picture and for good measure she tapped into the comms system and deleted any reference to the second attachment. The two of them seemed to have way too much fun to have it ruined by embarrassment over a picture that had not been meant to be distributed.

She opened the recording.

' _Sorry, Hoshi. You'll have ta wait a day or two for another recordin'. T'night is a private affair between me 'n my WIFE! WOHOOOO!' *click*_

She doubled over, laughing.

=/\=

"I hope you will be able to rein in your euphoria soon, husband. If anyone sees your facial expression, he or she might question your sanity."

"You mean I'm grinning like an imbecile?" he asked back as they navigated the corridor of the Vulcan science academy.

"Yes."

They arrived at the hall in which the plane was being assembled and true to his expectations the Vulcans had finished the second pair of wings. What was once Earth's biggest bi-plane was soon to become Vulcan's biggest and only bi-plane.

=/\=

They were standing on the upper floor watching the engineers down in the hall.

"He has realized the true implications of the tel, has he not?"

"Yes, Minister," T'Pol answered the question of Vulcan's new head of government. "I wish to ask your understanding for his unseemly display of emotions. He has wished for this moment a long time and seems unable to control his euphoria at the moment."

They continued to watch the engineer, who oversaw the final work on the airplane's hull, while simultaneously directing the start of the engine assembly, all the while featuring a perpetual smile and an energy that seemed out of place for a human in Vulcan's rather harsh conditions. With a pang of regret T'Pol realized that he would be too exhausted in the evening for another intimate encounter, which was singularly unhelpful as their two successful nights had 'seriously opened the floodgates' as Hoshi had described her condition.

"An apology is not needed," T'Pau replied. "We have spent too much time imposing our cultural beliefs on species who are not equipped to handle them. His behavior is fairly normal for a human in that situation."

"Is there anything we need to pay attention to during the maturing of our bond?"

"There is little advice I can offer, T'Pol. These things are rarely spoken of among ourselves, so we don't even have sufficient information about our own kind, let alone a bonding in which an off-worlder is involved. You will have to find your answers between the two of you."

"Apparently." T'Pol carefully measured her response to hide the disappointment at the other woman's inability to provide guidance.

If their two intimate encounters were any indication, they were on a good way to find necessary compromises; but it was still experimentation, and that, by default, included the option of occasional failure – and the scientist part of her  _katra_  did not like failure in any situation.

"I believe your mate is expecting you to join him," T'Pau said and put an end to her mental ruminations.

Looking down, T'Pol saw Trip stare up at her with that permanent smile etched on his features. Nodding towards T'Pau as a way of excusing herself, she climbed down the ladder to join her human husband.

=/\=

"Ow!" Hoshi cursed, clumsily getting up from the attempted split. So far her attempts at updating the choreography of the striptease routine she was about to perform had only brought the realization that six years of non-practice had left her a lot less flexible than she used to be.

She had tried – for reasons of 'modesty' – to move the split from the end of the performance to somewhere in between, when the panties were still where they were supposed to be, as opposed to somewhere in the audience, but the only thing that had resulted from it was the realization that she couldn't do one any more without spraining a muscle or twelve. She needed a plan B and for that she needed Trip's help.

=/\=

T'Pol had tried to protest. After all, Hoshi had asked  _him_  for a conversation; but her mate accepted no discussion. There would be no secrets between them, and considering Hoshi's current activities and her secret admirer lurking somewhere, there was a chance that the talk would involve intimate topics. That was why she was sitting next to him when Hoshi's face appeared on the screen.

"Hi, Hoshi."

"Hi, Trip, Hi. T'Pol," she said with a beaming smile. "First of all, congratulations. I nearly fell over laughing when I heard your recording."

T'Pol could see that Trip didn't manage any more meaningful response than what he called an 'idiotic grin' in blissful euphoria at the memories this statement conjured up.

"It was indeed a most pleasurable experience," she agreed vaguely, not willing to provide more detail with her mate nearby. She had grown used to discussing intimate details with Hoshi, in a ritual the human called 'girl talk', but the name of it suggested that the presence of a male, even if he was the subject of the conversation, was not appropriate.

"Trip, I know you've probably got better things to do if that grin is anything to go by, but I need your help to prepare for next Tuesday."

The smile vanished from his face. "If you're thinkin' about a rehearsal – sorry, Hoshi. T'Pol's barely comfortable enough with us comin' to the official event."

She was moved by her mate's consideration. She would indeed have found a private performance, even if it was for practice reasons, a most disagreeable prospect. She had come to believe that, despite his colorful past, her mate would not seek intimacy outside their marriage, but that did not override the natural possessiveness Vulcan females felt towards their mates.

"Nothing of the sort," Hoshi said. "I need a prop. I tried to change my choreography to a less naughty one and had to discover that I can't quite do some routines anymore – not without additional training, and four days are not going to be enough."

"What do you have in mind?" she heard him ask.

The young woman let out a nervous giggle. "I need a cocktail glass big enough for me to sit in. Preferably, of course, made from something unbreakable like Plexiglas. It's enough that I have a comms code on my butt, I don't need to add glass splinters too."

"Trying your hand at Dita von Teese?" he asked back, and the mention of an obviously female name made his wife tense. Obviously he had noticed her apprehension, because next moment he took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly.

"Dita von Teese was a Burlesque performer about one hundred sixty, one hundred seventy years ago," he explained to her after Hoshi had answered his question with a nod. "One of her main acts was ending a striptease by taking a bubble bath in an oversized cocktail glass."

"To be honest, Hoshi," he said, turning back to the young linguist's face on the view screen, "I think that would fit you a hell of a lot more than those naughty splits or a wild lap dance. . And if you want to impress this guy, it might pay to do something a bit … stylish. You've changed since the days back at STC."

"That's what I found out the painful way," she agreed, and rubbed her thighs as though trying to ease an ache there. "Do you think you can build such a thing in the next two days? I'd need at least a day of practice."

T'Pol could see him considering. When he spoke again it was clear that it was not only the construction issues he had in mind.

"Hoshi, do you really think it's necessary to do a full strip in the first place? I understand you had a ball back then and I could build you that prop in a matter of hours, but these days a lot of people know you and if that secret admirer of yours only comes to see you naked, he's the wrong guy to begin with."

"If he only wanted to see me naked or get into my pants, he would have accepted my very obvious invitation last time." The answer held a note of defiance, and it seemed as if Hoshi was even a bit hurt by the implicit insinuation regarding her 'secret admirer'.

"You've fallen quite hard for him, haven't you?"

T'Pol did not need to be an expert on human behavior to hear the worry in her mate's voice. He might not have intimate designs on Hoshi, but he was obviously very concerned about her well-being. She wondered if he had transferred the protectiveness he always felt towards his deceased sister Elizabeth to Hoshi.

She remembered the scene when Lieutenant Reed and Hoshi had returned from the mission to destroy the Xindi weapon, still thinking that Captain Archer had not survived. Instead of seeking solace from the tactical officer, to whom she had long been attracted, she had sought the embrace of Trip – the protection of a surrogate older sibling instead of someone who might perceive the contact as an intimate invitation.

Meanwhile the young comms officer had overcome her embarrassment and answered his inquiry with a nod.

It seemed that it was her turn to speak up.

"We will help you any way we can with your preparations," she said. "Perhaps if I was to witness your preparations as a neutral observer after Trip has produced the 'prop' you need..."

Another nod, this time accompanied by a smile. Undoubtedly the young human would also use the opportunity to probe for more details about her 'wedding night', as Trip had called their first sexual encounter after he had learned of the true meaning of the tel.

=/\=

"It appears to be a rather complicated device considering Earth's technological level at the time," Trip heard the Vulcan professor say.

"We always had a knack for gettin' ourselves in over our heads," he answered with a grin. "These things were a nightmare to maintain two hundred years ago and failed more often than not, but the turbofan engine revolutionized air travel. Suddenly we could cross distances in a fraction of the time it had taken before."

"I was always fascinated as well as perturbed by humanity's obsession with speed."

"Says someone of a species with warp seven engines," he shot back and turned to face the Vulcan, his expression earnest. "Professor, you guys live long enough that some of you were already born when this technology was new on our planet. To us two hundred years sounds like eternity. If we're lucky we live half that time and a human over eighty is not much cop for anything, so you can scratch another twenty years off. We simply don't have the time to waste any of it."

"An interesting thought," Solan agreed. "I had never considered that your shorter life-span would give you such a sense of urgency."

"It's a human thing. Take Henry Archer for instance. He was the greatest warp engineer since Zefram Cochrane, but he worked all his short life on something he never got to see finished. That's a kind of thought we humans can't cope very well with. That's why Jonathan Archer was hell-bent on seein' the thing fly. He wanted to finish his dad's work."

The Vulcan nodded understandingly.

"You should prepare your engineers to take protective measures for their hearin'," Trip continued. "These things are incredibly loud. We'll be runnin' the first engine test in two days, so you don't have much time."

"Why did you choose this ancient design over a fusion engine?" Solan asked.

"The second one will get a fusion engine. It's more effective, smaller, cleaner and doesn't pollute the atmosphere, but I wanted to build at least one original design. It's the one that goes back to Earth, by the way. Your people wanted to learn what we did, why and with which resources. So I thought at least a short demonstration would make sense. Most of the test flights will be with the fusion engine though."

"A logical proposal. Does the Earth embassy have protective devices to protect hearing?"

"The engineerin' detachment should have ear protectors. I'll have them sent here," Trip acknowledged. "We'll have to augment them with additional paddin' to make up for your more sensitive hearin'."

Solan, meanwhile, had been looking around, and his curiosity had obviously been caught.

"May I ask what this particular mold is for?"

Trip looked over to the mold he had prepared for Hoshi's oversized cocktail glass, and concealed a grin.

"That's an artistic prop," he answered, deliberately vague. "I'm currently havin' the Plexiglas surpluses from producin' the windows smelted."

He could see the confused look of the Vulcan.

"Look, Professor, you've been most understandin', but believe me, you wouldn't quite get your head around what this is for. It's a facet of human behavior that your people would hardly understand. So I'd like to ask you to believe me that it is not something that'll bring harm to Vulcan."

"I was not intending to insinuate anything like that," the Vulcan answered and if he didn't know better, Trip could have sworn the Professor was enjoying his momentary uneasiness.

=/\=

Jonathan Archer sat back in his armchair, reading the latest engineering reports. Anna Hess and the engineering teams had certainly not wasted much time on carrying out what must be the most unusual job they had ever been assigned to. On the way back to Earth a veritable game of musical chairs had been started by relocating T'Pol's second in command, Ensign Mayumi Rao, into Trip's quarters – with her own residence being given to Crewman Fuller and her room-mate. That freed Fuller's quarters to have the bulkhead knocked out and the two cabins had been combined into a big residence, able to house two more than comfortably.

As always, nothing was staying a secret for long on this ship and soon word had gotten around that the science officer had requested to be assigned to joint quarters with the ship's chief engineer. The very fact that the crew, despite the grim news from Vulcan, had thrown a party under the unmistakable motto 'Finally!' left little to guess what they thought about that particular development.

And every department had been jostling to get in on the project. Science, knowing that their head of department had a habit of getting caught up in her private research of micro-singularities, had installed a big desk and a terminal with direct access to the scientific database in a bid to enable her to conduct her research from the comfort of her own quarters; Engineering had followed suit by installing a desk with a full-blown engineering console. Anna Hess had gone so far as to predict that the ship would be screaming through the galaxy at warp six within the year, now that the two sharpest minds aboard could conduct research together without the restrictions on 'interacting' with each other as they were out of public view.

Hydroponics (not to be outdone) volunteered several pot plants and the soon-to-be residence of the ship's First Couple became the second-greenest place after hydroponics bay itself.

With a pang of slight envy Jon noticed that the quartermaster had pulled out all stops once they had arrived on Earth and the spacious bathroom in the new 'presidential suite', as Hess and her team had dubbed the place, featured a bathtub big enough to accommodate two and the bunk had made way for a king size bed.

It was as if the whole crew had used this project to celebrate this development as something good that had come out of the grueling time they had spent in the Expanse.

Of course, nothing that  _Enterprise_  did would have been perfect without the interference of a cantankerous, but (since recently), benevolent old Vulcan named Soval.

Jon had been prepared to be lectured about the malicious influence of the ship's chief engineer on the resident Vulcan, but instead, upon visiting the building site, the Ambassador had noted that the relationship between the two commanders would only be successful if T'Pol's need for meditation was met in an adequate manner and he volunteered several ornaments and decorations from the Vulcan Embassy's inventory. Under guidance of the venerable Vulcan diplomat, a small part of the new suite had been turned into a neat and small private meditation chamber. For two of its officers  _Enterprise_  had turned into a five-star cruising ship.

In all honesty, maybe they had gone a bit overboard, but Jon would not have it any other way. Now the only thing left to do was pitch the idea to Maxwell's successor, Admiral Gardner, without getting himself demoted to Crewman.

=/\=

T'Pol fought down the predictable disappointment over the fact that there would be no intimate encounter this evening. The fact that she was carrying her sleeping mate into the house made that abundantly clear.

He had exhausted all his energy by working the whole day, foregoing the mid-day sleep. On the other hand, she reasoned, it was a good thing that her  _Adun_  would be unable to engage in sexual relations. It had taken her a while to understand that 'making love', as he preferred the activity to be named, was more than just an intimate activity to elicit pleasure and it should not become trivialized by being conducted too often. The only problem was that she found herself wishing for more of the exhilarating activity, and waiting was not something she was particularly good at.

Despite her uneasiness, she had brought the katric arc with her mother's essence with her. Not only was she uncomfortable with the thought of the device being stored away like an old relic on Mount Seleya, at least for now she could use her mother's counsel, no matter how discomforting her bluntness would be.

Putting her exhausted mate down on the bed, she gently removed his uniform, which only emphasized the exhaustion he had suffered as not even her lifting his body to remove the garments was able to wake him. He just slept peacefully, the smile he'd worn all day still present on his face.

=/\=

"Child!" her mother's katra complained, and T'Pol grimaced before projecting clothes over the mental representation of her own body.

"How are you mother?" she asked. "I hope the residence in a katric arc is not too inconvenient?"

"I cannot know, child. The last thing I remember is leaving your mind. Obviously a katra in an arc is just... dormant until it is needed."

"I would wish to ask your counsel, perhaps with a little less graphic detail than last time, mother."

"From what I see in your memories, however incomplete they are, I would think you have outgrown the necessity for any counsel of mine."

"Was the loss of memory part of your experience as well?" T'Pol asked and was surprised to see a fleeting smile on the mental image of her mother.

"Our success in making it a fulfilling encounter was always easily measured by how little we remembered of the proceedings – at least in the early months of our marriage. The memory loss will diminish over the time as will the strong urge to repeat the experience."

"So my almost permanent wish for intimacy is normal as well?"

"You have only just begun to explore something that most Vulcans deny themselves out of irrational fear. I wore your father out frequently during the first year we lived together after our marriage. I believe he was quite relieved to return to his post after the year of seclusion."

"I hope I can reduce my urges a little faster than that," T'Pol noted drily.

"You will, with time, daughter. And I never had the opportunity to tell you this in my lifetime, but now I am convinced that you chose well."

"I wish his species was a title more long-lived," she admitted. "I fear the day when he is gone."

"You are speaking to someone, who has survived the severing of the tel. Your father went way too early. If Charles reaches his natural lifespan, you will have at least a decade more with him than I was afforded with my mate. If I was caught up in one of your time-travel phenomena and able to repeat my life, I would marry your father again as every day I could spend in his presence was worth it."

"Why could we never speak this openly in your lifetime, mother?" T'Pol could not prevent her tone from becoming not only plaintive but a little accusatory.

She heard a sigh emanating from the mental representation of her mother's katra.

"In reality my emotions were no less close to the surface as yours or your father's," T'Les admitted. "Unlike him, however, I was subject to strong censure and sought to spare you the same fate by insisting that you follow more traditional values than I did, which included a more pronounced distance between us. Of course your father would not quite follow my lead. Even before knowing your memories I was convinced that your frequent excursions into the desert had nothing to do with any knowledge deficits on your part. It was just a respite from my strong objection to your frequent displays of emotions. Over the time I came to accept that and merely kept up a façade."

"I miss him," T'Pol admitted sadly. "And I regret that you had to die for us to reconcile."

"Only my corporeal existence is gone, daughter. I too regret that your father's katra was lost, but mine is still intact. Feel free to call upon my help whenever you see fit, but now I think you should retire me back to the arc. Your mate surely does not wish to wake up with the other half of the bed empty."

T'Pol did something she had never done in her mother's lifetime.

She hugged her.

=/\=

He slowly opened his eyes after what felt like three weeks of dreamless sleep. Although it had only been four days since they had taken residence here he thought to himself that he would have been a bit disappointed if the view had differed from the one he had woken up to the previous days.

But it didn't differ. T'Pol was propped up on her side, gloriously naked from the waist up and observing him with those hazel-colored eyes she had once used to stare people into submission. Now, though, these eyes were filled with unbridled affection.

A short look at the clock told him that she had spent at least an hour like that, just enjoying watching him sleep. Well, it was only fair that he now spent a few minutes just enjoying her being topless.

"Mornin', darlin'," he said.

"My face is up here,  _Adun_ ," she said with an unmistakable spark of amusement in her voice.

He shared a good morning kiss with her. For someone with a heightened sense of smell, she sure took his morning breath like a trooper.

"That's a new word," he noted in regard to her address. "What does it mean?"

"It means 'husband'."

"Hmm, there's another word I can definitely get used to hearin'," he said with a wide grin.

=/\=

Hoshi smiled as she inspected Trip's work. He had really thought of everything. Her oversized cocktail glass was exquisitely done and he had even thought of vacuum clamps that fastened the oversized piece of tableware to the floor. On the side that was supposed to face away from the audience, a small ladder led up to the rim of the contraption, allowing her to enter the oversized goblet without the necessity of advanced gymnastics.

That was why she liked the engineer so much. She knew that he thought she should have outgrown the juvenile habit of stripping by now, but nonetheless he had put his full expertise into producing the best possible prop for her. In a way, he had perhaps produced the prop for her final performance, as, if Goldie should turn out the Mr. Right he seemed to be, she would no longer afford the view on her body to anyone but him and close friends, who happened to visit when she wore her favorite 'at-home costume'.

=/\=

Trip stifled a yawn. It had only been seven hours since he had woken up after a full night of deep, dreamless sleep, but the thin air and the higher gravity drained the energy out of him.

He looked at the design documents of the Pratt & Whitney turbofan engine and compared it to the current build status of the device out in the engineering hall. The Vulcans were really good at metallurgy, so producing the right alloys for different parts usually went without a hitch. If nothing unforeseen happened, they would be able to fire up the device late the next day.

He reached for his cup of coffee, but found it empty. When he stood to get a refill from the re-sequencer, his approach was interrupted by the entry of his dear wife. He looked at her in slight confusion when she locked the door without as much as an explanation.

His expression of confusion intensified when she zipped open her uniform, shrugged it off and took off the gray top of her underwear.

"What are you doin', darlin'?" Not that he actually needed 'what' so much as 'why'. He hoped he knew the answer already, but he had a feeling that he was in for a disappointment. Her expression confirmed this; it certainly didn't convey any intention to rip his pants off and get down to business.

"I'm undressing, husband," she replied dryly, coming to stand in front of him wearing nothing but her gray underpants.

"Well, I've riddled that out myself, wife. Not that I'm complainin' about the view, but exactly what's the big idea?"

"I intend to make sure that you don't skip the midday sleep and you appear to rest better when I accompany you. Take off your uniform. I will prepare the divan."

Shaking his head with a smile, he shrugged off his uniform, watching T'Pol expand the divan so that two could rest on it comfortably. There was something spectacular about T'Pol doing house chores half-naked. Either Hoshi was rubbing off on her or she did it specifically to please him.

As much as he admired her unbelievably well-shaped frame, he made a mental note to let her know that he would not love her less if she didn't shed her clothing at the drop of a hat. Nor was having all that delectable naked flesh in view likely to make him feel inclined to sleep – quite the opposite, indeed. But that aspect of it evidently hadn't occurred to her, so he smiled inwardly at her cute naïveté and schooled his mind to take the gesture as it had been meant. It  _was_  time for a midday nap and it had just become a whole lot more attractive as an option. Even if he had to control a sudden almost overwhelming urge to do something a whole lot more exciting than sleeping.

He joined his wife on the divan, and with her head resting on his chest he fell asleep far sooner than he might have expected.


	6. Ancient Delights

Trip looked on sleepily while T'Pol got dressed again after their afternoon nap, and prepared to get up too.

“How come you're havin’ an afternoon nap?” he asked with honest interest. “What happened to 'Vulcans can go without sleep for days'?”

“I was not sleeping. I used the time for meditation. The steadiness of your heartbeat is a fairly suitable substitute for a meditation candle.”

“May I submit that this is a much more entertainin’ meditation technique than watchin’ you sit in front of a candle all night?”

“Unsurprisingly, husband. Although you might revise your premature assessment if I tell you that traditional meditation does not strictly prescribe the use of clothing,” she answered, and he was treated to the full spectrum of her 'teasing voice'.

“Oh heck, all these tough decisions,” he lamented theatrically.

=/\=

“Okay, that's when the bra goes,” she heard Hoshi explain. The young human had presented her intended choreography in slow-motion and T'Pol found her Adun's assessment quite correct. Even if the wisdom of undressing for an audience of strangers still eluded her, the graceful movements of Hoshi did in fact distract somewhat from the fact that she was also shedding clothing that had not been too extensive to begin with. The undressing seemed more like an addition to the routine as opposed to its main purpose.

The young human had opened the clasp of her brassiere with the back to the invisible audience before slowly turning around to reveal her bust.

“Maybe you can enhance the effect by hiding your bust with your hands, waiting a few additional seconds before finally revealing it. I noticed the pleasurable effect on my _Adun_ is improved if the clear view on several body parts is a more random event as opposed to being entirely predictable,” the Vulcan noted, and sporting a wide grin the human repeated the sequence, this time hiding her breasts by covering them with her arm. After a few more seductive hip-movements she let the arm fall away slowly, turning the movement into a graceful gesture that was part of the dance.

“You’re obviously making progress in your studies of human intimacy,” Hoshi said.

T'Pol raised an amused eyebrow. Admitting that the topic held a much bigger fascination than micro-singularities would be too obvious, but then, she reasoned, Hoshi probably knew that anyway.

“How come you’re suddenly interested in my routine?” Hoshi asked, and she could see that the question was a serious one for the young human.

T'Pol considered.  It was important that she mingle honesty with tact – and the latter was something she sometimes had difficulty with, but she did not want to offend her friend.  “I do not understand the wisdom of undressing publicly, but it is not my place to judge something that you are obviously quite comfortable with. As for my interest in your routine, I share my Adun's opinion that if you are going to perform it, you should do it in a way that has artistic value and leaves your dignity intact, especially since he theorizes that this particular interest might dry up if your mysterious suitor should fit the high expectations you obviously have of him.”

“He knows me quite well, doesn't he?” Hoshi said and T'Pol saw a wistful smile on the linguist’s face. “He's like the big brother I never had. Somehow I think I wouldn't have taken my chances with Goldie if I didn't know that Trip was nearby to protect me if things go wrong.”

T'Pol raised her eyebrow.

“You aren't upset, are you?” Hoshi asked nervously, noticing the movement.

“Since 'siblings' normally have no intimate designs on each other, I have no reason to be upset. I find your idea of relying on my husband for protection, however, rather optimistic. He is routinely an accident waiting to happen whenever he leaves the ship. I could think of more reliable guardians.”

The other woman doubled over, laughing.

“Ouch, don't let him hear that, T'Pol.”

=/\=

He checked the read-outs and all parameters looked good, so he activated the klaxon that alerted all Vulcans to don their hearing protectors. He forced himself not to look around as he knew he wouldn't be able to keep a straight face for ten seconds. It was a good thing that Vulcans were strict subscribers to the adage 'function over form', as they looked ridiculous with the large protector cups over their ears. That they were bright red didn't help either. But ridiculous or not, they worked; and considering that that the noise alarm wouldn't make the cut for a human alarm clock, he did not mean to test what happened when Vulcan hearing was exposed to the racket of an unshielded one-hundred-seventy-year-old turboprop engine.

He switched the start arming switch on and started the booster pumps and the auxiliary power supply unit. When they had spooled up and their RPMs on the read-out reached the required value, he flicked the ignition and fuel pump switches to the 'on' position. Seeing the affirmative light indications, he shoved the power levers into the start position, checking one last time that the aircraft was properly fastened. The large fans of the exhaust extraction system for the hall were spinning and nobody was in the dangerous area around the propeller. In fact the Vulcan professor had assembled his engineers at a very respectful distance at the other side of the hall.

Finally it was time to start up his creation, and with some excitement he pressed the start button, accompanied by a short priming boost. Soon the starter motor had surpassed the 2,200 RPM mark. The loud whine of the starting engine reverberated from the walls of the large hall. Steadily the RPMs climbed towards the 9,000 mark and as expected the 'fuel pumps parallel' indicator extinguished. The torching in the exhaust nozzles stopped and the fans in the ceiling sucked out the large plume of black smoke. With a final scream the engine sprang to life and Trip switched off the booster pumps and the APU. His engine was running.

=/\=

Professor Solan found himself in a veritable storm created by the spinning propeller of the human contraption. Even though the ungainly human hearing protection devices were heavily padded, the noise level of the historic engine was phenomenal. He couldn't quite imagine what it must have been like when Earth's atmosphere was filled with such noisy craft.

For the moment, however, he ignored the artificial wind, instead watching the wildly celebrating human. One would have thought that building a design that had become obsolete nearly one and a half century ago would not be such a source of elation, but obviously there was much still to learn about the first non-Vulcan member of his clan.

The noise started to subside as the human had apparently turned it off, satisfied with the parameters he had established during the short test run. At least that was what the Professor surmised from the satisfied expression on the human's face.

=/\=

“Are you okay, T'Pol?” Hoshi asked, laughing hysterically.

She sat naked in her oversized goblet, having just rehearsed the routine in its entirety. Suddenly T'Pol had let out a loud whoop, as if she was trying to imitate her significant other. Of course the sudden outburst had been followed by a very embarrassed blush on the Vulcan's face, but Hoshi could barely calm down. It had just been too hilarious a moment. Once the initial shock at T'Pol actually whooping and cheering a striptease of another female had subsided, the laughing fit had taken hold.

“I am indeed,” T'Pol said. “The bond must be getting stronger. This was not my emotion. I believe Trip meant to conduct the first engine test today.”

“I suppose we can rule out total failure,” Hoshi said, still giggling. “For a moment I thought you were cheering _me_.”

“The choreography is significantly improved over what you recalled in the past, but I doubt an artistic performance of any kind would ever excite me this much,” T'Pol remarked drily. “Now the important question is, where do you procure a 'fig leaf'.

“I know where we can get the material to make one from fabric,” Hoshi said, hopping out of her prop and gathering up some street-legal clothing that she had laid ready. “And while we're at it, we are going to 'procure' something for you. I believe you didn't quite get around to staging your 'bust day' yet and you wouldn't want to greet hubby in the same costume twice, would you?”

“Apparently not,” T'Pol noted with a raised eyebrow.

For someone with a predilection for not wearing any if not strictly necessary, her human friend certainly knew how to don clothes quickly.

“Come on.” Hoshi preceded her out of the door, looking back with a twinkle. “And if you can spare any details about the wedding night – I'm bursting with curiosity.”

=/\=

It wasn't every day that he got to impress a room full of Vulcans, Trip thought. The first ever turboprop airplane built on Vulcan had certainly done the trick. Now all he had to do was getting the thing flying, which was tricky enough as it meant getting enough airspeed not only to overcome the thinner atmosphere, but also the higher gravity, which was not exactly an asset when trying to fly an airplane.

According to his calculations everything should work out fine, but anything over ten thousand feet would be uncomfortably close to coffin corner and he didn't quite plan to be the first pilot to have a plane crash on Vulcan. Things would be a bit easier with the fusion engine, which wasn't dependent on athmospheric pressure and therefore would not lose power in the thin air; and since the Vulcan-made alloys were lighter and stronger than anything produced on Earth,their maximum operation speed was closer to two hundred knots rather than the puny one hundred and forty of the original design.

Thankfully the Vulcans had produced the parachute and it had even been checked by an expert. It had been quite a surprise that he wouldn't be the first to do a parachute drop on Vulcan should the need arise in case of an emergency. Apparently there was a small group of hobby parachutists at the embassy, who once in a while took the liberty of jumping out of perfectly serviceable shuttlecraft – presumably for fun, much to the bewilderment of their usually Vulcan pilots.

He threw his uniform into the laundry chute and switched on the unloved sonic shower to get rid of the soot that had left marks on his arms and neck. After that little private topless show of T'Pol’s this afternoon and her obsession with his getting enough rest during the day, it wasn't a risky bet what the late-night program would be. Add to that the fact that she had spent the entire afternoon with Hoshi and the already lousy odds of betting against sexy time reduced still further. In this regard he very much liked lousy odds.

=/\=

T'Pol noticed that she had spent quite some time lately observing her own physique in the mirror. Wanting to be attractive to a male of a species that was highly simulated by visual input was a stressful affair. They had been cooped up aboard _Enterprise_ for nearly a year while in the Expanse and with much chagrin she had noticed that she had gained 2.176 kilograms of weight in that time, which was unacceptable as it was also accompanied in a 1.05 centimeter increase in waist circumference. A more rigorous workout regime was obviously needed.

Thankfully today’s costume would mask this new deficiency in her physique, seeking as it did to inspire interest elsewhere with other 'arguments'. They had come to the idea of dressing her up as some mythological figure called _Pallas Athena_ after a lengthy discussion about Hoshi's performance that would be presented in two days.

Uneasy with the thought of her _Adun_ being exposed to the sight of another female's genitals and genuinely convinced that a more understated performance would be more befitting Hoshi’s age, she had spent considerable time in discussion, trying to convince her human friend of her logic. Hoshi had finally agreed and would now keep her genitalia hidden behind a stylized fig leaf, impersonating  an ancient figure from Earths mythology called 'Eve'. Hoshi had theorized that this would perhaps even open the possibility of luring her secret admirer onto the stage to perform impromptu as a male partner called 'Adam'. 

To complete T'Pol’s transformation, Hoshi had styled the long wig from the mission to the Akaali homeworld into an elaborate bun that apparently represented the predominant hair-style in Earth's ‘helladic’ period. It appeared to be still satisfactorily in place, and when at last she was entirely satisfied with her appearance the Vulcan walked back into the living room to await the arrival of her adun.

Her quiet meditation was interrupted by her mate, who came home humming in satisfaction. When their eyes met he froze, stared at her open-mouthed, pivoted on his heels and left, slamming the door shut from outside.

“Oh my freakin' god!” she heard him shout outside, followed by hysterical laughter.

“That's any predatory wildlife in the vicinity effectively dealt with,” T'Pol remarked drily to herself.

Thankfully there were no other residences in the immediate vicinity, although she suspected that _tela'at_ Varok or any of his family members would probably have heard her mate's outburst should they happen to be at home. Thankfully, too, she was not subject to undue sensitivity on the score of her mate’s reactions.  Thanks to the bond, she knew that the laughter was merely a product of surprise, and did not indicate any lack of appreciation.

=/\=

Trip was breathing hard as he tried to rein in his hysterics. That picture had just taken him by surprise. T'Pol was a goddess at any time, but now she was literally looking like one.

Carefully he opened the door again and was greeted by T'Pol standing in the living room, awaiting his return with a very elevated eyebrow. She was wearing a dress like something you’d see on a classical Greek vase, open on her left side to reveal a small strip of her smooth skin the entire length from the shoulders down to the feet. Two tiny gold brooches, strategically placed, held the front and back together.  But the real party piece was that it was not horizontally wrapped around her torso, but diagonally from the right side of her waist over her left shoulder and again secured by a third gold fibula. A second one was supposed to do the same on the opposite shoulder, but since it was pulled upwards instead, her entire right arm and shoulder were uncovered, as was her right breast – completely bared. It was a mesmerizing sight. He stood staring for some moments, drinking it in, before walking forward to embrace her.

“Jeez, and I thought you couldn't top the last getup. One day I'm gonna come home and you'll be wearing something ...normal. I dread that day, my dear wife,” he said, gently cupping her exposed breast while starting to exchange a very hot kiss. What had started as their customary smooch when he came home from his construction work was soon escalating into a heavy weight tongue wrestling match.  It wasn't every day that one got to kiss a Greek goddess, after all.

Before he knew it, he was stark naked! Somehow in between kissing the daylights out of him, she had managed to push off his uniform and pull down his pants, first with her hands and then all the way down with her _foot_. He had of course noticed how she had pushed off his overall, but after that his interest had been captured by other things.

He looked at her with a surprised grin, the little engineer standing at attention, but when he reached for the fibula on her shoulder, to rob the cloth around her body of the little cohesion that held it in place, she took an evasive step back and instead returned with a large white cloth and started to wrap it around his body in much the same fashion as hers. Not even three minutes later he found himself looking like a Roman in a toga, half his torso bare, like hers.

“I thought it would improve the meal's atmosphere if we looked somewhat... alike,” she noted with a teasing undercurrent in her voice.

“I thought it would improve the meal's atmosphere if we skipped it, my goddess,” he said, his voice hoarse with desire to continue what they had started. 

“It would not promote your ability to perform in your marital duties if you were to escort me to the bed-chamber without the necessary replenishing of thy energy, my dear _Carolus_ _Ingeniarius.”_

“Thou art so wise, my dear goddess of crafts and skill. Thy will be done, adorable Athena,” he proclaimed, going down on one knee and kissed her hand.  Whoever would have thought those dry-as-dust lessons in the classics all those years ago would have borne fruit?  Belatedly he sent apologetic thanks to the professor who’d spent so much time and effort trying to din the subject into a head that even then had been stuffed full of ‘more important’ and _far_ ‘more interesting’ engineering projects.

With a grin he went to follow her 'divine order' to wash his hands. When he was in the corridor, he let out a chuckle. T'Pol was as thorough as always, even when attempting role-playing. Life was just getting better and better.

=/\=

With a deep-seated pleasure at the contentment she felt simmering in their nascent bond, T'Pol/Athena put the finishing touches on the table. Even though they had not had much time to investigate Greek culinary customs, they had opted for roast mutton and fried eggs for him. Hoshi had helped her prepare the dishes as T'Pol could not, for obvious reasons, sample them. Especially the eggs were important, according to Hoshi, since they would give 'proper ink in the pen'. It was obviously a reference to her _Adun's_ potency, although she had to date not yet found it lacking in any regard.

For herself she had prepared a broth containing a mixture of Earth and Vulcan vegetables, refined with a small amount of the only animal matter that Vulcans were allowed and willing to consume – seafood. Her father had come from the shores of the _Varoth_ Sea, which was why seafood had always been a rare but not unheard-of part of her family's diet.

This would be one of the few occasions on which she would indulge in consuming an alcoholic beverage, as Hoshi had helped her procure a bottle of Chalkidiki red wine from present day Greece in one of the human shops in the Embassy. As this contained an almost 15 volume percent alcoholic content she was worried that they could become slightly inebriated, but since her mind assured her that even so her mate would be up to his usual, _more_ than satisfactory, standard of performance, it would not make much of a difference.

She realized that going about her tasks in the household in a partial state of undress had started to feel quite natural to her. While complete nudity, as often practiced by Hoshi, was problematic – for hygienic reasons if nothing else –, the absence of any clothing above the waist-line had almost become normal by now. Especially at the high temperatures at his time of the year, it actually increased her comfort as it made regulating her body temperature a lot easier. And the positive effect that such state of undress had on her mate was of course not to be dismissed either.  She would however have to make sure that he was not afforded to watch her unclothed form too often or it would become so common a sight that he would not regard it as special anymore. That was why the rather agreeable way of meditating without a shirt would have to be conducted when her Adun was not at home.

Said subject of her affectionate thoughts came back to the living room, and she could smell that he had applied her new favorite deodorant, a potent substance they had procured from a Corridanite trader on the market in _Shi'Kar_. It had an almost aphrodisiacal effect on her, which was why he only applied it when they were in the privacy of their residence, where he could 'do something about' the arousal the intoxicating smell inevitable caused. It was a good thing that she wore no underpants below her wrapped garment as she could feel her nether region moisten with the excitement and her nipples started to harden, pushing against the thin fabric of her apparel, as far as they were covered by any.

She closed her eyes and luxuriously sniffed along his torso, savoring his potent scent, while running her fingers gently through the sparse hair on his half-exposed chest.

=/\=

Hoshi smiled with satisfaction as she inspected the two fig leaves she had produced. Both would be attached around the body using near-transparent stretch bands that would be invisible to all but the closest inspection. One smaller one was meant for her, with a bigger one for Goldie, should she manage to entice him to join her on stage. If he was bold and had enough self-esteem enough to do something crazy like that, he was definitely the right one, and she wouldn't hesitate a fraction of a second to make sure such a catch would not get away from her.

Of course his fig leaf was a darn sight bigger than hers, since if he was small enough to fit behind hers there would be a serious compatibility problem. The old adage 'It's not the size of the ship, it's the motion of the ocean' was true to some extent, but it would take a hell of a lot of time to get to England in a row boat. Fortunately during the one encounter they’d had during her half-drunken lapdance, she glimpsed enough to believe that he was very satisfactorily provided for in the boat department.

If her timing wasn't off, a half-naked, pointy-eared goddess and a toga-clad, dumbfounded mortal would by now be having dinner, or perhaps already enjoying a somewhat more satisfying feast. It had surprised her how quickly T'Pol had taken to the idea of trying erotic role-playing.  The ship’s XO had taken to play-acting over the years – Captain Archer still waxed lyrical at times about her performance as “Judge Merciless” to extract the warp signature from one of Kaitaama's abductors – so in a way it wasn't perhaps so unusual after all that she would try to use that newfound talent to spice up her budding love-life.

She hoped that a little over two days from now, she would too have a partner to make the most of the eighteen days that remained of their semi-vacation on Vulcan.

=/\=

Their faces were flushed in each other's respective colors – his red and hers green – as they both tried to concentrate on their meals, now that 'Athena' had satisfied her wish to inhale his scent and mess up his chest hair. 

“So how was your afternoon, my goddess?” he asked, slicing off a piece of his roast mutton, and picking up a few olives to go with it.

“I assisted Aphrodite in preparing her plan to seduce Adonis,” she replied coolly. “I believe I was successful in influencing her to temper the forcefulness with which she will express her intentions; however, her plan to entice him to spontaneously join her courtship ritual might present a substantial challenge for the fair-haired suitor.”

Trip nearly choked on the piece of meat that wasn't even half-way down his gullet.

“She does what?”

“She wishes to seduce him as part of her routine. I believe the performance is to be named 'The temptation of Adam by Eve'.”

“Well, it’ll certainly make it easier for me to keep an eye on his reaction when he's actually on stage. Just imagine if she’d have pulled such a stunt on poor Malcolm...”

She didn't answer his speculation. Instead she raised the bronze chalice with her wine, waiting for him to do the same, and they drank, looking at each other with growing desire.

=/\=

“You have _what?_ ” Gardner asked.

Jon was preparing for a veritable chewing-out, but he kept his voice level, not allowing any lack of confidence he felt in his own decision to creep into it.

“I've approved that they move into joint quarters. And now I want to make sure that Starfleet will not separate my two most trusted officers.”

His bold front appeared to have succeeded – partially.  Gardner glared for a moment longer and then his gaze dropped to the PADDs on his desk, which appeared to irk him from the way he pushed them aside.

“You know the rules, Jon. If Starfleet wanted you to have an engaged couple  aboard, they would have issued you one. We'll be inundated with similar request from other couples.”

Jon took courage from the fact that his superior sounded more fretful than outraged.  “Sam, you know why the no-frats were introduced – people being unable to separate private time and duty. Do you really think a Vulcan will suffer from that particular problem?”

“Dammit Jon, I’d hoped to start my job without going up against the likes of Hiram Black right from the start. It's hard enough to take over from Maxwell as it is. Until now I’d been laboring under the delusion that his day had only 24 hours like for the rest of us. God knows how he managed such a workload without running himself ragged.”

“They can keep a low profile and nothing will get out from the crew,” the captain said persuasively, refraining from making any comment about Maxwell. He still didn't trust his composure to speak about his deceased friend. “The problem will have to be addressed at some point. I don't even know why I keep calling it 'a problem'. It's the only real good thing to come out of our time in the Expanse and it’s been a major morale booster for the crew. All I want to know is that until there’d been a suitable time to discuss the situation formally, there won't be any move to get one or both of them off the ship.”

He could see that the Admiral was thinking for a moment.

“Okay, Jon. For the time being we'll handle this on a 'don't ask, don't tell' basis. We never had this discussion and I won't ask any questions as long as nothing gets leaked outside the confines of your ship. For the record, if it was for my personal opinion, I'd promote the hell out of it, but the Xindi mission has seriously messed up society back on Earth. We have a major problem with xenophobia now, so for their sake, make sure word doesn't get around.”

Jon nodded gravely, not showing how disillusioned he was by the ‘xenophobia’ bit of the news.  Without help from their alien allies he’d never have succeeded in preventing the destruction of Earth, but it seemed that that particular fact had slipped completely under the radar.

=/\=

Trip slowly backed up against the wall. T'Pol, more than a bit unsteady on her feet from the wine – they had emptied the whole bottle of the strong drink – looked at him with a fire in her eyes that he had not seen before. From the way she was devouring him with her looks one could think he had not touched her in a year, even though it was a mere forty-eight hours since the three hour marathon of passionate love-making that had been their 'wedding night'.

Her speech was slurred, but even if it hadn’t been he wouldn't have understood a thing as she was speaking in Vulcan – or whatever passed for it when she was more than slightly tipsy. She yanked the part of her 'dress' that was draped over her shoulder forcefully, then did the same to the other two fastenings. The three fibulae detached and impacted the wall with a series of loud 'pings'. The unwrapped cloth fluttered to the ground and she stood before him in her birthday suit.

=/\= 

Carefully he stripped off his own toga before T'Pol could stage the 'great Vulcan cloth massacre'. Soundlessly the garment sank to the ground. He stared open-mouthed as with a suddenly lewd expression T'Pol lifted one of her breasts and started licking her nipple. He had never seen her behave so salaciously before, and chalked up this heretofore unseen side of his wife to the effect of the wine. He watched her in a mixture of surprise and raw lust, sporting a very obvious manifestation of his arousal.

Her breathing brew more and more ragged as she continued pleasuring herself, all the while slinking very slowly in his direction.

“Does it please you to see me behave lasciviously, mortal?”

He looked down at his rock-hard erection.

“What does it look like, my goddess?” he shot back with a lustful look. The fact that she was still able to switch back to English told him that she had spoken Vulcan before for the benefit of the recording. And the fact that she could still see him and her mind was therefore quite coherent still -the intoxication notwithstanding - made it clear that she had done this deliberately, with the only unknown variable being whether the wine had caused this decision or if she had planned it.

“I offer you my bust for your pleasure, mortal,” she lustfully whispered in his ear once she had reached him. Since he was literally standing with his back to the wall, she rubbed her naked body against him. "Do you wish to be pleasured between my breasts?"

“I would very much like to do that, my goddess,” he muttered dumbfounded by her lewd attitude.  

She grabbed his erection and led him to the bed on unsteady legs. When they arrived, she lay down on her back, spreading her legs provocatively and held out her arms in a welcoming fashion. He crawled up to her on his hands and knees. Settling into position he placed his erect tool between her breasts, and she pushed them together. Steadily he started to pump his rod back and forth between her two hills, humming in pleasure.  His wife’s firm pressure from either side made it a very tight experience.

=/\=

He was lying next to her working studiously on her left nipple with his tongue while circling his thumb around the right one after he had finished his first attempt at a thorough tit-job. Somehow she had known when he was close and had quickly gulped his member into her mouth to take the load down her throat rather than have it spread all over her chest. Considering that that she had always taken it that way during their previous encounters, she had either an aversion to facials or a predilection for getting an extra snack out of him.

Now, however, she didn't look like making any decision other than begging for more, or whatever the stream of Vulcan chat she was releasing was supposed to mean. This being the postponed 'bust day' that had spontaneously been turned into a wedding night two days ago – with a much more varied program – he wanted to see if he could get T'Pol to climax just by concentrating on the body part to which she had dedicated the encounter.

He continued his gentle ministrations, and if her bucking hips were any indication, she was not quite content with his 'neglect' of the lower half of her body. He remembered her warning of her taking what she wanted by force, but being forcefully mounted by his gorgeous wife didn't quite sound like an awfully undesirable situation to find himself in, so he was taking the gamble and continued his gentle torture of her nipples.

Her wails, that increased steadily in volume to the point that whatever wildlife was outside the house would by now be running for the safety of the desert, leaving a contrail in their wake, told him that the chances of his plan working out was growing by the minute. T'Pol was extremely sensitive in all body regions and before he could finish the thought she roughly grabbed his hair, pushing his face firmly into her chest as she climaxed explosively.


End file.
